The Primer

China’s technology sector has entered a phase defined less by consumer growth than by a race for self-reliance. After a decade of platform expansion, the center of gravity has shifted to the hard problems: advanced semiconductors, foundation models, and the industrial supply chains that feed them.

US export controls on high-end chips and the tools to make them have become the organizing fact of the era — pushing Beijing to fund domestic alternatives and reshaping how every major firm plans. At the same time, a wave of overseas expansion is sending Chinese apps, e-commerce, and electric vehicles into markets worldwide.

The result is a landscape of contradiction: constrained at the frontier of compute, yet dominant in EVs, batteries, and the applied deployment of AI at scale.