AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order

by Kai-Fu Lee

The pace is incredible in China. While I was leading teams in China, I’d just call a meeting on a Saturday or Sunday, or whenever I felt like it, and everyone showed up and there’d be no complaining. If I sent a text message at 7:00 PM over dinner and they haven’t responded by 8:00 PM, I would wonder what’s going on. It’s just a constant pace of decision-making. The market does something, so you better react. That, I think, has made the China ecosystem incredible at figuring out innovations, how to take things to market. . . . I was in the US working with a vendor. I won’t use any names, but a vendor I was working with actually called me up one day and they said, “Andrew, we are in Silicon Valley. You’ve got to stop treating us like you’re in China, because we just can’t deliver things at the pace you expect.”