Is China “Uberizing” the U.S. Technology Empire?
Xi Jinping proposes an AI “symphony of cooperation” in Shanghai while Silicon Valley talks about transcending humanity and breaking free from democracy.
Audio: https://clyp.it/4mp3clsw
Julio A. López, Editor-in-Chief.— Faced with Silicon Valley oligarchs who speak of transcending humanity and breaking free from democracy, a head of state appeared in Shanghai this week quoting ancient sages and speaking about the common good. For billions of people across the Global South—and for more than a few Europeans who have grown somewhat weary—that is exactly what they want to hear. For the first time in twenty years, China is perceived more positively around the world than the United States. This is, of course, also an oversimplification: the Chinese project clearly converges, at a deeper level, with the same power embodied by American technology. The only remaining question is a simple one: how could it not?
Xi’s Speech at the World AI Conference
The Chinese president delivered the opening address on Thursday at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance in Shanghai, attended by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and several Asian heads of government. During the event, he announced the creation of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), headquartered in Shanghai and already joined by 29 countries.
“The development of artificial intelligence should not be the solo performance of a single country, but rather a symphony of global cooperation,” Xi declared, echoing—perhaps not coincidentally—the language promoted months earlier by the Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which seeks “to return to all humanity the crystallization of humanity’s collective wisdom.” China also announced that over the next five years it will provide 5,000 AI training opportunities for developing countries, establish cooperation centers with ASEAN, the Arab League, the African Union, CELAC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS, and enable 30 countries to use Mazu, its AI-powered meteorological early warning system—named after the goddess who, according to Chinese tradition, watches over the four seas.
The Parallel with Uber’s Strategy
A remark attributed to a British chief of staff during Churchill’s era recounts that, when asked how the Allies had won the war, he replied: “Our German physicists were better than their German physicists.” Are we now living through the reverse of that moment—with Chinese engineers?
The analogy advanced in this analysis draws on the strategy Uber used to conquer the global market: subsidizing rides through venture capital financing, eliminating competitors unable to withstand years of losses, and, once dependency had been established, raising prices above market levels. Beijing may be applying that same dynamic on a geopolitical scale. By releasing, free of charge, models that rival the best American systems—DeepSeek yesterday, Kimi K3 today—China drives the prices that laboratories backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in private capital can realistically charge down to zero. And the Chinese state’s politically directed capital can withstand pressure far longer than U.S. financial markets do.
A Narrative, Not Just a Business Strategy
But just as Uber needed a compelling narrative to justify its expansion, the “Uberization” of the American technology empire also depends on a narrative. And that narrative, the analysis argues, deserves close attention. Xi carefully cites classical thinkers such as sociologist Fei Xiaotong and the ancient text Yantielun, while promising AI that is “human-centered” and “permanently under human control,” in contrast to those who predict the emergence of a “permanent underclass.” He also advocates “true multilateralism” under the auspices of the United Nations and rejects what he describes as “new historical injustices” against the Global South.
The Technology Showcase Behind the Narrative
Among the products unveiled at this year’s WAIC were MiniMax’s M3 model, the first smartphone featuring a fully integrated autonomous AI agent, and Huawei’s Atlas 950 “supernode,” a state-of-the-art architecture designed for AI training and reasoning—evidence that, behind its rhetoric of cooperation, Beijing is also competing aggressively in the technological race it says it wants to democratize.
