It seems that China may be going through a recession. It’s hard to tell because we can’t really trust government data, but my vague impression (which you shouldn’t trust very much) is that China is in a pretty bad economic position.
What implications (if any) does this have for AGI development in China?
Since no one is giving answers, I’ll give my super uninformed take. If anyone replies with a disagreement, you should presume that they are right.
During a recession, countries want to spend their money on economic stimulus programs that create jobs and get their citizens to spend more. China seems to be doing this.
Is spending on AI development good for these goals? I’m tempted to say no. One exception is building power plants, which China would maybe need to eventually do in order to build sufficiently large models.
At the same time, China seems to have a pretty big debt problem. Its dept-to-GDP ratio was 288% in 2023 (I think this number accounts not only for national debt but also for local government debt and maybe personal debt, which I think China has a lot of compared to other countries like the United States). This might in practice constrain how much it can spend.
So China is in a position of wanting to spend, but not spend too much, and AI probably isn’t a great place for it to spend in order to accomplish its immediate goals.
In other words, I think the recession makes AGI development a lower priority for the Chinese government. It seems quite plausible to me that the recession might delay the creation of a large government project for building AGI by a few years.
(Again, I don’t know stuff about this. Maybe someone will reply saying “Actually, China has already created a giant government project for building AGI” with a link.)