A couple of weeks ago, DeepSeek launched its R1 large language model chat, sending a clear signal of China’s determination in the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Many people rushed to see this as proof that China is technologically ahead of the West.
But, hey, I think there is something more interesting to consider.
In most of the critical technologies powering the modern world, China wasn’t the pioneer of the core breakthrough. Instead, China has become very skilled at taking working ideas, perfecting them, and scaling them. And while some might call this copying, I see it more as a cultural and industrial model we need to understand, rather than simply dismiss.
Innovation and Risk
High-risk, early-stage research and development is expensive, messy, and uncertain. Western companies (and Japan/Korea) usually shoulder this burden, spending billions over years of experiments, false starts, and regulatory hurdles. These pioneers aim to create technologies that might work but only a few times succeed.
Once something reaches proven commercial viability (whether it’s solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, 5G telecom, or now foundation AI models) Chinese companies often move with impressive speed to scale production. They benefit from:
- A vast domestic market
- Government industrial policy support
- Strong supply-chain coordination
- Lower labor and compliance costs
They can then refine the technology, drive down costs, and produce at a scale that the original Western innovator struggles to match. As a result, Chinese versions often dominate global markets while the original developers are still trying to recover their R&D investment.
This approach is not accidental. China’s industrial policy is deliberately built around:
- Leapfrogging trial-and-error by learning from proven foreign technologies
- Creating national champions to dominate global markets
- Maximizing employment and industrial growth through massive-scale production
- Avoiding expensive failures by letting others take the first risky steps
It’s a highly pragmatic strategy that treats technological “perfecting” as valuable as taking the earliest research risk.
This pattern strongly echoes what I wrote earlier on my blog about 山寨 (shānzhài) culture, which is a mindset of adapting, improving, and commercializing existing ideas rather than inventing entirely new ones. If you want a deeper dive on that cultural thread, check out my earlier post on 山寨 here. Once seen only in knock-off electronics, that same logic has now scaled to entire national industries.
Is Copying and Perfecting Bad?
I don’t think so. History is full of examples where countries learned from others, adapted existing models, and then refined them to build lasting economic power.
Spanish Empire’s economy was based on cooperatives, guilds, and cofradías that valued community, mutual support, and social stability rather than maximizing profit. In contrast, Britain’s Anglo-Saxon capitalism emphasized individual entrepreneurship, capital investment, mechanization, and market-driven production, enabling rapid industrial growth and greater efficiency.
Like Britain’s industrial leap, success comes from not just copying, but enhancing and optimizing what exists, then applying it at a huge scale. Taking smart risks in scaling and refining technologies can drive rapid advancement and global leadership without being the first to invent.
Japan’s rapid modernization in the 19th century provides another example: by studying Western industrial models and adopting market-based capitalism alongside government-led coordination, Japan transformed from a feudal society into a global industrial power in just a few decades.
China’s current “fast follower” strategy fits into this long tradition. It takes proven foreign technologies and economic models and adapts them with speed and scale, backed by state planning and a huge domestic market. This approach allows China to perfect and dominate industries in a way that few others have done before.
What Should Consumers Consider?
Ultimately, people will choose what wins in the marketplace. If you look only at price or features, perfected Chinese products will always seem attractive. But I believe there is another dimension worth reflecting on:
- Who took the initial risk to develop that specific technology in the first place?
- Who funded the years of failures before success?
- Will those innovators survive if they cannot recover those investments?
No one is asking you to avoid affordable products, that’s just not realistic. But it is worth being aware of where the original breakthroughs came from, who bore the costs, and who deserves the credit.
If we want to keep seeing radical, transformative innovation, supporting those willing to take the biggest R&D gambles should matter to us, too.