Last week, a massive high-tech trade fair in central China buzzed with activity, drawing a strong contingent of Russian officials, business leaders, and media. The only American presence, however, was merely the disembodied voice of Elon Musk, echoing from a Tesla video promoting “humanoid robots.”
Tesla’s booth was just one among hundreds, showcasing a dizzying array of cutting-edge, and sometimes peculiar, technological marvels. Attendees witnessed boxing robots, toilet-cleaning robots, and even emotional support robots designed for the elderly. The expo also featured automated police vans, a self-driving yacht, and products from over 100 Chinese electric vehicle brands, all locked in fierce competition for market dominance.
Prominently displayed at Tesla’s section of the fourth Global Digital Trade Expo in Hangzhou was its Cybertruck. This imposing, tank-like vehicle is currently barred from sale in China due due to regulatory hurdles. While Tesla cars are available, their sales have sharply declined, unable to withstand the intense rivalry from Chinese manufacturers offering superior technology at significantly lower prices, though only a select few of these local brands manage to turn a profit.
Spanning an area larger than 21 football fields, this vast exhibition of Chinese innovation underscored the nation’s successful transition. Once a manufacturing giant propelled solely by cheap labor, China is now an economic powerhouse increasingly driven by innovation and a mastery of advanced technologies that were previously the exclusive domain of the United States.
However, amidst rising global trade tensions and concerns in both wealthy and developing countries about a deluge of Chinese exports, the expo also brought forth challenging questions: Who will ultimately purchase this enormous volume of products? And can the companies behind these innovations achieve sustainable profitability?
The digital expo commenced last Thursday with prominent Chinese officials and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko advocating for greater international collaboration. Their remarks subtly critiqued the fluctuating efforts by the Trump administration to restrict China’s access to the most advanced artificial intelligence chips and impede its ascent as a high-tech superpower.
Wang Hao, the Communist Party boss for Zhejiang Province, where Hangzhou is located, highlighted that the digital economy now contributes over 50 percent of his province’s total output. Zhejiang was once an agrarian region renowned for its tea and silkworms. China, he asserted, aims to cooperate with all nations to explore the vast potential of digital trade and forge a new era of mutually beneficial partnerships.
Yet, President Trump’s perspective on such cooperation has been stark, having previously stated in April that China “has ripped us off and left us for dead.”
For one salesman at the expo, proudly demonstrating his urinal-cleaning robots, this negative view misrepresents the universal benefits. He argued that since “nobody likes cleaning toilets,” it’s only logical to let Chinese robots handle “the dirty work.” His company, Hangzhou Star Species Robotics, has primarily focused on the domestic market, selling robots for washrooms in Chinese railway stations and other public venues, but he now harbors ambitions for international expansion.
Without directly addressing President Trump, the expo organizers sought to convey that American attempts to isolate China have proven ineffective. They proudly announced that 11,000 international buyers had registered to attend, a 64 percent increase from the previous year, signaling the expo’s expanding global reach.
A recent tour of Chinese high-tech companies in the Yangtze River Delta, arranged for foreign journalists by the Foreign Ministry, reiterated this message: regardless of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb China’s progress or any domestic economic challenges, China’s advancements in AI, robotics, and other digital industries are relentlessly accelerating.
“If you face a blockade, you can always find an alternative route,” stated Kong Fuan, the Communist Party secretary at the Hongqiao Overseas Development Service Center in Shanghai. This government office actively works to attract foreign investment and talent while also assisting Chinese companies in their global expansion efforts.
Mr. Kong emphasized that while the United States is imposing stricter and more costly conditions for foreign workers, China is extending a welcoming hand to global talent. The nation is rolling out a new visa category specifically designed to simplify travel and business opportunities for graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics from leading universities worldwide.
In Hefei, a city transformed from a modest backwater into a vibrant high-tech hub, the AI firm iFlyTek stands as a testament to China’s resilience against U.S. policies. Despite being placed on a U.S. blacklist in 2019 by the first Trump administration due to human rights concerns, effectively blocking it from purchasing American products, iFlyTek’s ambitions remained undeterred. The company has since unveiled a plethora of new products and relocated to a strikingly futuristic campus.
Among its innovative offerings are a device for grading school exams and an AI chatbot capable of answering questions in multiple languages, including Chinese, English, and Russian. When asked about the Ukraine conflict, the chatbot cited Russian security concerns but also pointed to President Vladimir Putin’s dissemination of false propaganda and the use of the war to distract from Russia’s “stagnating economy.”
Cheng Chen, general manager of iFlyTek’s consumer business group specializing in AI translation, explained that the exam grading machine aims to empower teachers to dedicate more time to creative, essential tasks rather than replacing them. She asserted that restrictions on advanced American-made AI chips, which she acknowledged as superior for training large language models, have not hindered the company, thanks to adequate substitutes provided by Chinese tech giant Huawei.
iFlyTek, with state-owned China Mobile as its largest shareholder, has seen its share price more than double since the initial Trump-era sanctions, demonstrating minimal impact from recent U.S.-China trade disputes on its market valuation.
Last week’s reports that China had restricted its major technology companies from acquiring advanced AI chips from American firm Nvidia further underscored the narrative that China is capable of forging its own path.
This drive for technological independence has been a cornerstone of Chinese state policy under President Xi Jinping. In recent years, Mr. Xi has frequently invoked the term “self-reliance” (zili gengsheng), a phrase once championed by Mao Zedong to promote an economically isolating and ultimately impoverishing autarkic policy. Xi’s contemporary vision of self-reliance, however, is not about total isolation but about ensuring the Communist Party’s firm control over any foreign elements that could challenge national sovereignty. He articulated this in an April Politburo meeting, emphasizing the need to cultivate an “autonomously controllable” ecosystem for AI hardware and software.
Yet, there are clear limitations to China’s ability to operate entirely independently, a reality underscored by the fervent desire for international sales evident among many of the high-tech companies at the expo.
China has consistently accumulated increasingly large trade surpluses, which last year contributed to nearly half of the country’s economic growth and mitigated the impact of a prolonged property market downturn.
Despite a sharp decline in trade with the United States since Mr. Trump assumed office this year, largely due to tariff uncertainties, China’s overall trade surplus is projected to surpass last year’s staggering nearly $1 trillion gap between exports and imports.
The question of whether China can truly thrive without the most advanced American AI chips remains a subject of considerable debate. At the Hangzhou expo, Chen Jiaxin, a marketing manager for Unitree Robotics, enthusiastically discussed her company’s advancements in developing human-like robots that can dance and box. However, she politely sidestepped all inquiries regarding the impact of U.S. export restrictions on chips and broader trade tensions, stating it was “not convenient to answer.”
Perhaps the most telling response came from DeepSeek, a small Chinese startup that last year surprised Silicon Valley with an AI system, powered by Nvidia chips, that rivaled the capabilities of much more expensive chatbots from giants like OpenAI and Google. DeepSeek had a booth at the Hangzhou digital expo, but, possibly to avoid sensitive questions about a rumored delay in its new AI model’s release due to issues with Chinese-made substitute chips, the stall was left unattended, displaying only its logo and no further information.