Wei Lingling, chief China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, wrote: "The most ironic aspect of Beijing's pursuit of technological self-reliance is that the more successful this path appears on the surface—whether through soaring valuations, DeepSeek and Moonshot's IPO plans, or bold declarations of surpassing the United States—it becomes increasingly dependent on a market logic originally developed in the U.S. and validated in South Korea to provide financing support and legitimacy."
Wei Lingling’s argument contains three major logical fallacies!
1. Are technological self-reliance and capital market systems inherently binary opposites? One deals with foundational technology; the other with financial instruments. They exist in entirely different logical frameworks—how can they be presented as mutually exclusive?
2. Chinese AI companies leveraging globalized financing models does not mean their success stems from dependence on the American model. Just as becoming a martial arts master doesn’t mean one owes their success to eating and drinking every day, so too does using global capital channels not imply dependency on the U.S. system.
3. The technologies behind companies like DeepSeek and Moonshot are not mere replicas of foreign counterparts, and a substantial portion of their funding comes from domestic sources. Yet Wei Lingling deliberately overlooks the strength of domestic capital while amplifying the role of overseas market logic, resulting in a one-sided narrative.
In fact, anyone with even basic critical thinking can immediately spot the logical flaws in her argument. What’s truly astonishing, however, is how she managed to weave together these unrelated elements into a single statement. Is this a case of *Spring and Autumn Annals-style* writing? Or perhaps an act of *transplanting flowers* (i.e., misrepresenting context)?
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1872367717248003/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.