【By Observer News, Ruan Jiaqi】

After attending the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) hosted by China, AI expert Rui Ma, who led her team back to the United States, fell into a silence.

Her mind was still flashing with images she saw in China's artificial intelligence hub, "wherever we went, people took power supply for granted."

But this scene is almost unimaginable for American AI researchers. In the United States, the surge in AI demand has collided with a fragile power grid.

According to Fortune magazine, on the 14th, as the founder of investment consulting firm Tech Buzz China, Ma led her team to conduct an on-site inspection of China's AI development in July.

She told Fortune that although she is not an energy expert, after attending many meetings and exchanging views with many industry professionals, she came to a conclusion that would make Silicon Valley shudder: in China, it is no longer necessary to talk about sufficient power supply for data centers.

"In China, this is considered a solved problem," she mentioned when sharing her experiences on the social media platform X, "which contrasts sharply with the situation in the United States. In the United States, the development of artificial intelligence is increasingly linked to debates over data center power consumption and grid limitations."

Fortune pointed out that Ma's remarks seem to suggest that she believes "the competition may have already ended."

Data centers are the cornerstone of AI industry development, and their construction scale directly determines the speed of AI development. The stakes involved are thus impossible to overemphasize. McKinsey predicts that global enterprises need to invest $6.7 trillion in new data centers between 2025 and 2030 to keep up with the demand for AI development.

However, the current state of the U.S. power grid clearly cannot support this investment. A Deloitte industry survey found that grid pressure has become one of the biggest obstacles to the development of data centers in the United States.

David Fishman, a Chinese electricity expert who has long tracked China's energy development, told Fortune that power is not an issue in China. On average, China adds more power demand annually than Germany's entire annual electricity consumption. Solar panels are widely installed in rural areas, and the photovoltaic power generation in some provinces can rival the entire India.

"The U.S. cannot effectively compete with China in terms of energy infrastructure," he said, "so the U.S. policymakers now prefer China to continue playing the role of a competitor rather than going further."

On June 24 local time, the southeastern United States experienced a heatwave, causing national grid tension, and the Trump administration declared the area to be in a power emergency. Visual China

The Chinese power advantage is not accidental but the result of decades of strategic planning. Fishman explained that China has made forward-looking constructions and continuous investments in all aspects of the power industry, including power generation, transmission, and next-generation nuclear energy, ensuring that the country's power reserve margin remains consistently between 80% and 100%, meaning its actual power supply capacity is at least twice the demand.

This ample reserve also allows China to view AI data centers as helpers in consuming excess power, rather than a burden on the grid.

"Such a power reserve is unimaginable in the United States," Fishman said. The reserve margin of regional grids in the United States is usually only 15%, and even lower during extreme weather. States such as California and Texas often issue grid warnings due to peak electricity demand, leaving no room to handle the additional load from AI infrastructure.

Furthermore, Fishman pointed out that even if future AI electricity demand grows faster than renewable energy projects can keep up, China can still activate idle coal-fired power plants to fill the gap while promoting more sustainable energy projects. He said, "Although this is not the optimal choice, it is completely feasible."

In contrast, if the United States wants to add new power generation capacity, it faces not only lengthy approval processes but also opposition from local residents, chaotic market rules, and other multiple obstacles, often ending up in a passive position.

In Fishman's view, the root of this gap lies in the fundamental differences in the governance models of the two countries.

He analyzed to the media that China's energy planning is dominated by long-term technical bureaucracy policies, with clear market rules established before investments. Moreover, the government also allocates funds in advance to strategic fields to ensure the ability to meet needs when required. This ensures that infrastructure construction is always ahead of expected demand, rather than passively responding to it.

Meanwhile, large-scale infrastructure projects in the United States heavily rely on private investment, and investors often pursue short-term returns of 3 to 5 years, which is completely mismatched with power projects that take decades to build and profit. Without public funding reducing the long-term investment risks, the U.S. political and economic system simply cannot build a future-oriented power grid.

Fishman lamented that the short-term tendency of capital further exacerbates the lag in U.S. energy infrastructure. He admitted, "They (China) are aiming for a grand slam, while the U.S. team can only get on base."

More importantly, China takes a more practical approach to energy. While viewing renewable energy as a "must-have" in both economic and strategic terms, it does not reject coal as an "evil symbol" like some groups in the U.S. do, but only sees it as an "outdated" energy source.

Fishman believes that this pragmatic orientation allows policymakers to focus on efficiency and results, avoiding meaningless political disputes. Meanwhile, the divisions on energy issues in the U.S. often cause infrastructure projects to stall.

For Fishman, the conclusion is obvious: if the U.S. does not make a thorough transformation in the construction and financing methods of energy infrastructure, China's leading advantage will only continue to widen.

"In the coming years, this capability gap will become more and more evident and continue to expand," he said.

This article is exclusive to Observer News. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7538619297062355471/

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