Asia has become the new center of gravity in the US-China AI race — and at this month's APEC 'Digital Weeks' in Chengdu, China, the contrast in the two powers' approaches was on full display. Chinese companies showcased open-source AI models, while the US presence was strikingly subdued, according to new reporting from CNBC.
The American strategy — selling Asia a 'full stack' of US chips, models and cloud services through the American AI Exports Program — has so far drawn fewer than expected applications. Politico reported earlier this month that the Commerce Department had received just 78 applications for the program. A Commerce spokesperson said the volume 'exceeded our expectations,' but the quiet turnout underscored Washington's uphill push in a region where Chinese alternatives are often far cheaper.
At the Chengdu event, Google and Meta were the only US companies with booths CNBC observed, and both emphasized products other than large language models — Google highlighted AlphaFold, Meta small-business AI tools. Tencent, by contrast, promoted rapid adoption of its Hunyuan LLM. The subdued US presence followed a dramatic policy reversal that saw Anthropic reportedly flip-flop on its Fable AI model release amid abrupt US policy changes.
Beijing, meanwhile, is pressing its advantage. At the World AI Conference in Shanghai on July 17, President Xi Jinping promised developing countries 5,000 AI training opportunities and cooperation centers with Southeast Asia. On July 23, the 21 APEC member economies — including the US — endorsed open-source AI with 'strong security,' a phrase analysts say lends legitimacy to China's open-weight strategy across emerging Asian economies.
The cost difference is decisive: 'Chinese companies have ramped up cheaper alternatives to American AI,' CNBC reported, while the US argues its stack is more complete from chips to models. Startups like Votee AI are already building localized models for Southeast Asia's 1,300+ living languages, often on Alibaba's open-source Qwen. Analysts expect no clean split — rather a hybrid mix of US and Chinese AI in most Asian markets. As economist Yue Su of the Economist Intelligence Unit put it: 'They ultimately cannot fully decouple from one another.'
