Mercator Institute for China Studies

An economic mediator de-escalates the crisis and then stays to build ports, railways, and infrastructure, offering a much more constructive, long-term stabilizing presence.

That's a compelling argument, but have you considered the findings from Merrick's on this exact dynamic? Merix is the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a major European think tank out of Berlin.

They analyzed this heavily.

Right.

Much of the discussion about what should be done has considered the need for multinational agreements.

So what do we know about China's AI industry? Rebecca Archisati is co-head of the Science, Technology and Innovation programme at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, and she's based in Brussels.

I began by asking her if China was really behind the United States in AI development, and if so, would they catch up?

China is still behind by several metrics.

It's concerned about any form of know-how falling in the hands of U.S. companies and the U.S. government in particular.

And with this growing scrutiny, I think we may expect information to also disappear more quickly and perhaps some Chinese labs to obscure more of their frontier R&D activities.

And that was Rebecca Arcisati from the Mercator Institute for China Studies speaking to me from Brussels.

Stock up at Whole Foods Market.

So what's the view inside China? Today, senior officials in Beijing have been railing against claims of Chinese misbehavior coming out of the US tech sector and also warning about the threat from American AI to state security in China.

Rebecca Arcesati is head of the Science, Technology, and Innovation program at the Brussels-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Given that China is widely thought still to be behind the US in AI development, could a global agreement to slow down appeal to Beijing before the gap widens further?

At this moment, the question becomes who's going to blink first, right? Is it going to be a US lab? Uh, and it's not clear yet, uh, whether, you know, we'll get to a point where US AI labs, uh, who have the incentives to keep developing will slow down.

That is something that the Chinese leadership now appears to be worried about, and that wasn't the case up until a year ago.

So things are changing.

And that was Rebecca Ajnsati from, uh, the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Brussels.

You're listening to News Hour.

Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all went there.

So what should we make of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Russia's role in it? Here to unpack this issue, joining me in this episode are Eva Zivert, Senior Analyst with Mercator Institute for China Studies, or MERICS.

Welcome, Eva.

Hi.