A new book by Mehran Gul, published in July 2025, argues that China is the only real competitor to the US in tech innovation.

Gul, a former tech journalist for the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, studied startups in China, the UK, Singapore, and Canada for “The New Geography of Innovation”.

He said that while other countries are trying, only China is advanced enough to be a serious rival to the US.

Gul highlighted DeepSeek, a Chinese AI firm, whose R1 reasoning model was published in “Nature” in September 2025.

He also noted Alibaba’s Qwen open-source AI models, which power the world’s top 10 open-source large language models, showing China’s growing global recognition in AI research.

🔗 Source: South China Morning Post