Beyond the usual stuff regarding Belt and Road, this is a strategic move by China on multiple accounts.
First, I highly recommend reading AI Superpower by Lee Kaifu. Look past the conspiratorial-esque title and focus on the main points that Lee makes:
The article touched on the fact that India's vast population skews younger and are also more likely to make the technological leap onto mobile-first. With China being the leader in IoT (internet of things), opening a way for Indian users to provide Chinese tech giants with more data will only further cement China's position as a leader in the coming AI economy.
I've been reading and enjoying Kai-Fu Lee's punchy new book on AI and geopolitics, AI Superpowers. In essence, the book claims that China is likely to rapidly overtake the US in AI technology in the next decade.
In short, the author claims that tech-dominance in the machine learning age is a function of (1) access to lots of good data, (2) an aggressive and smart entrepreneurial class, (3) brilliant researchers, and (4), political will. It's hard to deny that - pending a new Manhattan project for AI - China owns the US in (1) and (4). China and the US are close on (2), but Lee points to China's more cutthroat markets as giving it an edge. Finally, while the US dominates in (3) for now, Lee claims that the recent advances of ML as laid down by Hinton et al. will take decades to implement, meaning that the field belongs to tinkerers rather than geniuses (for now).
I've not finished yet, but my only qualm is that the US might have political stability in its favour, for now. For all the problems America faces, they at least have a track record of muddling through relevantly similar scenarios, whereas we've yet to see what happens in China in the wake of, e.g., major growth slowdowns.
Anyway, highly recommended to all, and interested in case anyone is reading along and has thoughts. The most astonishing fact presented so far to my mind was this: "In terms of funding, Google dwarfs even its own government: US federal funding for math and and computer science research amounts to less than half of Google's own R&D budget."
>their ability keep up pretense is waning ironically due to globalized nature of innovation and technology.
oh idk about that. Think it'll pick up pace dramatically in this direction.
Still exciting times ahead. I just hope the supply chain holds. Cause the only thing edible near me that isn't in a supermarket is the sheep at the petting zoo
AI SuperPowers is a good book to look at:
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, Lee, Kai-Fu, eBook - Amazon.com
Você ficaria surpresa.
Recomendo ler o seguinte livro para aprender mais: https://www.amazon.com/AI-Superpowers-China-Silicon-Valley-ebook/dp/B0795DNWCF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2BHQTG569Q4X6&keywords=a%C3%AD+superpowers&qid=1565064772&s=gateway&sprefix=A%C3%AD+super%2Caps%2C132&sr=8-1
I'd pretty much agree with this assessment of how many people's opinions about China have changed (including mine). I remember a few years ago reading the widely-praised Why Nations Fail, which suggested that for China's growth to be sustainable, especially in more high-tech and service industries, it would have to embrace more inclusive forms of governance. Well, six years since the book was published, that prediction is looking a bit tarnished; we've seen the emergence of the BAT tech giants as well as a healthy startup sector, even as Xi Jinping is tightening the screws.
The non-realisation of these predictions - that China would need to liberalise to manage imminent political and economic transitions - is a big factor for me. I've also been impressed by some other factors. China's 'techno-utilitarian' government (to borrow a phrase from Kai Fu Lee's new book) seems stunningly good at the the kind of big infrastructure projects that the developed countries have seemingly lost the ability to do on time and on budget. China's government seems to lack the kinds of legal and ethical scruples that will hobble (or 'cushion', if you prefer) the adoption of disruptive and ethically complex technologies like driverless cars, genetic modification, smart cities (with integrated mass surveillance), and brain-computer interfaces. There's also been less political turmoil and unrest in China than I expected by this point. A familiar criticism of China's education system, that it was poorly suited to producing creative innovators, seems to have turned out to be bullshit, at least if we're going by China's success in domestic tech startups and growing academic clout. China also seems to have done a good job - so far - of weathering some of the disruptive technologies that were supposedly going to shift the economic balance of power to Western economies again; in fields like 3D printing, AI, and clean energy, China has done a great job of positioning itself at the technological cutting edge.
As for your second question, what could still go wrong with China's manifest destiny as global hegemon, well, a few possibilities. I still wouldn't rule out a major wave of popular or even elite rebellion in China, as existing governing structures creak and new interest groups see opportunities for power. China's history is absolutely full of extended periods of division and strife - "the empire long united must divide" - and it doesn't seem a foregone conclusion that the country will avoid similar power struggles in the next 10-20 years. If there is a major Chinese internal conflict, the West's response to it will be the most important geopolitical choice it's made in at least fifty years if not longer. I really hope the State Department and Pentagon have legions of brilliant planners who are considering all the contingencies.
If China can avoid major internal strife, however, then I don't see any lurking economic or geopolitical reasons why it wouldn't effectively displace the US as global hegemon in the next 25 years. That may not be an entirely bad thing from the point of view of things like stability (I can't see China pursuing expensive and bloody ideological agendas in far off countries a la Iraq), but it'll obviously be a disappointment for those of us who set great store by human rights and democracy and have enjoyed having the global superpower at least nominally committed to those ideals.
The other thing I wouldn't underestimate is the power of events (dear boy) to throw apparently ineluctable destinies off course, especially my uneasy suspicion that we're in sight of the end of the tech tree for human civilization in its current form. Maybe it'll be a good end, with superintelligence and/or fusion power ushering in a postscarcity era in which the old geopolitics looks irrelevant, or maybe it'll be a bad end, with malevolent AI, Cronenbergian genetic monstrosities, or plain old environmental collapse smashing us to the margins. Or maybe it'll be something smaller scale, but still disruptive to the old ways of thinking, like the emergence of virtual communities with their own ideals of citizenship that compete with older loyalties. So possibilities like these - both foreseeable and unforeseeable - could certainly flip the script on China's emergence as global hegemon, but whether or not they'd strictly preferable depends on uncertainties and unfathomables.