GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
NIKKEI ASIA
CHINA’S DEEPSEEK v U.S.A.’S OpenAI
“Chinese AI startup DeepSeek quietly released an update to its V3 large language model on [1 April 2025], significantly enhancing its reasoning capabilities and further escalating competition with U.S. rival OpenAI. The updated model has improved significantly over its predecessor, especially in advanced math and coding, according to the company’s post on Hugging Face, a U.S. open-source AI community.
After taking the tech world by storm in January with its cheap-to-train but robust AI model, DeepSeek has become the poster child for Chinese AI ingenuity. The startup’s meteoric rise has rekindled optimism about Chinese innovation and bolstered Beijing’s commitment to supporting its tech players.
The Hang Seng Tech Index has surged around 25% since the start of the year.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;–
History will look back on DeepSeek as China’s Sputnik Moment – the day when Wall Street realised that China had arrived. Dramatic words? No. The Tectonic Plates have moved. A significant moment in history has occurred. It takes time for the full impact of such a seismic change to be felt but historians will link the words “Sputnik” and “DeepSeek” and recognise that real change is underway.
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MARTIN WOLF
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
“The rise of China has been far and away the biggest economic and political story of my lifetime.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
Martin Wolf is a somebody. For many years he has been the lead writer for the Financial Times, itself a lead newspaper in world coverage of international news.
In a recent article in the FT (5 April 2025) he makes some relevant comments about Trump’s Tariffs;-
“In the last two weeks I have visited Beijing and Hong Kong. This visit made clear that in today’s world, the US is a revolutionary — more precisely, a reactionary — power, while supposedly communist China is a status quo power…The rise of China has been far and away the biggest economic and political story of my lifetime” says Wolf.
Wolf is not a Communist. Far from it. Wolf is a strong believer in the Civic Society which is at the heart of the West’s concept of political freedom. He supports the Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers (the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary). He believes that support for his world view is shared by those PRC citizens who have attended Western universities and who, he believes, will carry increasing weight inside the Chinese Party in the years ahead. His contempt for Trump is clear as his respect for China’s achievements.
But there is a difference in the world approach of the Chinese leadership on the one hand and the world approach of Western opinion makers who acknowledge China’s progress. It is this – the former group believe that China has reached its present status because the Communist Party has remained steadfast in its commitment to Marx, Lenin and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. The latter group, however, believes that to continue to progress China needs to relax and adopt Western concepts of human rights, freedom of thought and the rule of law.
Therein lies the core of the challenge facing China as it progresses to 2049 and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The challenge for today is Trump but the challenge for tomorrow is to maintain the system of government developed by Deng Hsiaoping and Xi Jinping and to resist pressures to adopt the Civic Society and the Western norms of government.
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SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
CHINA’S FOREIGN MINISTER VISITS JAPAN
“The world is in flux, and few appear to know where it is headed. That was the mood when China’s top diplomat Wang Yi visited Japan last week for the first time in over four years.
His previous trip to Tokyo in November 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic now seems like a relic of a different era – when the US-led world order based on post-World War II alliances still held firm and American checks and balances had a steady pulse.
Now, just two months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, the global landscape has been turned on its head – with observers bemoaning the faltering American leadership and the unravelling of the old world order.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
The world is moving from Unipolar to Multipolar, from a U.S. dominated globe to one with a number of centres of power The US still has power, influence and reach. It remains (for the time being) the largest economy in the world but the pieces on the chessboard are moving. Pawns are challenging Castles. The distribution of power is subject to review and change. This is the real meaning of the first visit to Japan in four years by China’s top diplomat.
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS TODAY
“THE ASSUMPTION PROVED FALSE”
MICHAEL B. G. FROMAN
President of the US Council on Foreign Relations.
“In the 1990s and the early years of this century, there was every indication that China was on an inexorable march toward economic liberalization. Building on a process that began in the late 1970s under the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, China opened up to foreign investment. President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji then kept China on a remarkable, if painful, path of economic reforms.
Many in the West went so far as to believe that this economic liberalization would lead to China’s political liberalization, that a capitalist society would become a more democratic one over time. That assumption proved false. China’s leaders never seriously contemplated political reform, but China’s economic advancement was impressive nonetheless.
The country’s GDP grew from $347.77 billion in 1989 to $1.66 trillion by 2003 to $17.79 trillion in 2023, according to the World Bank. Hopes were high that integrating China into the rules-based trading system could lead to a more peaceful and more prosperous world. Globalization did lift more than a billion people out of poverty, an astounding feat. But the benefits of that progress were not evenly shared, and some workers and communities in industrialized countries ended up paying the price for the rise of the rest.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
The UK political system is based on representative democracy. The Chinese political system is based on consultative democracy.
Behind the terminology there is a big difference.
The Chinese system gets same day repairs to potholes; new hospitals are constructed and speedily treating patients; City parks are swept clean daily and 200 million Chinese will travel overseas by 2030.
The system is administered by the qualified staff appointed after passing rigorous exams/interviews. But there is no habeas corpus law. The Party rules but the Party must serve. If the Party falls short, or gets comfortable and smug it will be blown aside. Xi Jinping recognised this in his first address to Party members in 2012. The Party must be clean, committed and conscientious. Anything less and there will be trouble on the streets. The campaign against corruption is relentless.
After the big failings of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmin Deaths, the Party knows there is only one way – Serve the People and not Dictate to the People. The words are lost in the Western mindset but in China they have real meaning.
GRAHAM PERRY
