Is China Gaining Ground in Technology Diffusion? A Conversation with Jeffrey Ding

This week on Sinica, I chat with Jeffrey Ding, author of Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, a book that argues that a nation's ability to invent foundational technologies matters ultimately less in its overall national power than its ability to diffuse those "general purpose technologies," like electricity, digital technology, the internet, and — in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — Artificial Intelligence. I ask Jeff whether he thinks that China, with its powerful tech companies and its new enthusiasm for open source, may at last be closing what his book identifies as a diffusion deficit.

2:19 – Jeff’s argument for the power of diffusion in technological leadership

6:07 – China’s diffusion deficit

12:09 – Institutional factors that affect technology diffusion, and how culture can also play a role

19:49 – China’s successes in (non-GPT) diffusion

24:29 – China’s open source push

29:55 – Discussing He Pengyu’s piece on semiconductors

32:19 – How Jeff might tweak his chapter on China in a second edition of Technology and the Rise of Great Powers

Paying It Forward: Matt Sheehan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Recommendations:

Jeff: The TV series The Pitt (2025 - ); and James Islington’s The Will of the Many

Kaiser: The album Perpetual Change by Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks; and Steven Wilson’s new album, The Overview

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