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Orange Wang

The EU’s concept of tech sovereignty may prove an “illusion” in a world where artificial intelligence is dominated by China and the US, a Chinese expert has argued, urging Beijing to seize the opportunity provided by Donald Trump to make its products “indispensable” to middle powers.
The European Union rolled out its Technological Sovereignty Package last week in a bid to help the bloc become “a global leader” in artificial intelligence and protect its “digital independence”.
The EU defined tech sovereignty as the ability “to develop, control and scale ... critical technologies, infrastructure, services and data”.
On June 4, Canada also designated “building the Canadian sovereign AI foundation” as one of the pillars of its C$2.3 billion (US$1.6 billion) national AI strategy.
Japan, South Korea and India are also working towards strengthening their AI autonomy.
Those efforts come amid growing unease among these countries about becoming bystanders as Beijing and Washington vie for AI supremacy.
“In reality, middle powers face enormous obstacles in pursuing tech sovereignty, which might even be called a pseudo-proposition,” warned Huang Ping, assistant dean of the school of public policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Shenzhen campus.


Outside China and the United States, there was no third genuine “great power” when it came to the global AI race as the two countries had a “generational gap” over all others, he wrote in an article on Wednesday, produced with help from Chinese AI developer DeepSeek’s flagship V4 Pro large language model.
“In a world where the China-US G2 structure in AI competition has already taken shape, tech sovereignty for middle powers has shifted from a strategic goal into an unrealistic illusion,” he wrote in the article published by GBA Review, a social media account run by the Institute of International Affairs, Qianhai, where Huang is deputy director.
Developed countries like the EU member states, Canada, Japan and South Korea as well as emerging economies such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all lacked “sufficient autonomy in both technological capability and in their industrial and supply chains”, Huang argued.
The political elites in these countries – most of which were either Washington’s long-standing allies or emerging partners – harboured a “natural aversion and fear” of Beijing, compounded by implicit and explicit pressure from the US, and ultimately remained dependent on American technologies, he added.
Still, the predicament facing middle powers in their pursuit of tech sovereignty was “precisely China’s opportunity”, Huang said, describing those countries as “the core markets” in the China-US competition over AI.


“China does not yet have the comparative advantage or global influence to persuade middle powers to abandon the US and turn wholesale to China,” he said.
“Trying to achieve that in the short term is not realistic but could backfire – it would hand anti-China forces in those countries material for the political narrative that ‘China is attempting to supplant American dominance’.
“Our real goal is to have middle powers not choose sides – that they choose US technologies while not excluding Chinese solutions.”
He said Beijing’s aim should be to make Chinese enterprises, technology and solutions “not dominant, but indispensable”.
He suggested that enterprise “groups” – consisting of Chinese firms and foreign companies willing to cooperate – should offer middle powers irresistibly cost-effective propositions covering the full AI stack: power infrastructure, chips and compute platforms, foundational models, end-user applications and data governance frameworks.
Huang also highlighted that Chinese technology should deliver jobs and economic growth.


“When a China-led AI solution becomes deeply integrated into local industrial chains, creating substantial employment and economic output, any government seeking to exclude it would entail extremely high political and economic costs,” he said.
Huang warned that the window of opportunity for those efforts might be no more than two years – roughly the remainder of US President Donald Trump’s term.
“Trump’s deregulatory agenda will maximise the pace of AI expansion. Once the US models mature, supply chains fall into place and market dominance sets in, the room for Chinese AI to go global will shrink sharply.”
He also underscored that all the efforts he called for must be driven by commercial rather than political logic.
“What we need is certainly not a government-led, banner-waving strategic framework, as that often triggers political alarm in middle powers and fierce resistance from the US.”


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As middle powers will be reliant on US or Chinese tech, Beijing should make its products ‘indispensable,’ academic argues


As middle powers will be reliant on US or Chinese tech, Beijing should make its products ‘indispensable,’ academic argues.


EU tech sovereignty may be ‘illusion’ as China, US dominate AI: Chinese expert

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}As middle powers will be reliant on US or Chinese tech, Beijing should make its products ‘indispensable,’ academic argues

As middle powers will be reliant on US or Chinese tech, Beijing should make its products ‘indispensable,’ academic argues