Huang Renxun’s resignation sparks immediate U.S. media declaration of “China’s defeat”
It’s hard to keep a straight face: as soon as Huang Renxun announced his departure, the U.S. media’s “China loses” reflex kicked in without delay.
On the 12th, Bloomberg published an odd piece headlined “China Is the Biggest Loser in Huang Renxun’s Fall.” The article offered little substance beyond recycled assertions of inevitable Chinese failure.
In brief, Bloomberg’s logic rests on the claim that China’s progress in artificial intelligence has been achieved solely through “distilling American technology” and “smuggling American chips.” Therefore, with Huang no longer at the helm, Bloomberg argues, there will be no one left to “smuggle chips” into China—hence, “China must lose.”
It must be said: the reasoning in this peculiar Bloomberg piece is laughable. At best, it demonstrates one thing—that the campaign targeting Huang Renxun was a premeditated witch hunt.
The notion that China’s AI advancement relies entirely on “distilling American technology” and “smuggling chips” is precisely the argument long advanced by Dario Amodei, founder of Anthropic, a U.S.-based artificial intelligence company, to members of Congress. Amodei has sought to convince lawmakers across the political spectrum that halting chip exports to China would inevitably collapse its AI industry.
One might say his lobbying has succeeded. Today, a significant number of American politicians and media outlets appear to believe his narrative. The Bloomberg article is one example; another is recent remarks by Democratic Senator Abdul El-Sayed, who claimed that if the United States stops developing AI, China would be unable to catch up through imitation.
In fact, Americans have long been drawn to a recurring narrative: China is powerful yet fundamentally fragile. They persistently invent imagined “absolute vulnerabilities” in China as a form of self-soothing—a psychological crutch deployed during moments of crisis, from the subprime mortgage meltdown to the Russia-Ukraine war, and even the Iran-U.S. tensions, each triggering a reflexive invocation of “China must lose.”
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1881725779761156/
Disclaimer: This article reflects the personal views of the author