China envy in Silicon Valley

The fascination with China’s ability to build things America struggles with, from bridges to advanced tech, risks a dangerous miscalculation about what drives China. — Dongyan Xu/The New York Times

SILICON Valley has a China envy problem.

In social media posts, podcasts, interviews and newsletters, the elites of the American tech sector are marvelling at China’s speed in building infrastructure, its manufacturing might and the ingenuity of the artificial intelligence company DeepSeek.