Silicon Valley’s China envy reveals a lot about the US

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, writes Li Yuan from Hong Kong

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ilicon 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 AI company DeepSeek. At the same time, they are lamenting ageing infrastructure and cumbersome regulations in the United States, and an economy that can’t seem to make screws or drones, or the machines that manufacture them.

Some have called for an American DeepSeek project, published industrial manifestoes full of references to China and even adopted China Tech’s gruelling “996” work culture, 9 am to 9 pm six days aweek.

“As China races forward, moving goods, people and information at machine speed, we risk being stuck in the past,’ a recent blog post from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz warned.

Among Silicon Valley leaders and policy-minded Democrats, there is a fascination with China. It’s a mix of curiosity, anxiety and envy. Long-held assumptions about China are being reevaluated.

Suddenly, Chinese firms once dismissed as copycats are being studied for lessons on efficiency and scale. China's top-down, state-led system is being reframed not as a political liability but as a model of efficiency and execution.

Both narratives — China as cheater and China as colossus — are simplistic reactions to something far more complex. Yet their popularity reveals something deeper about the American psyche as the nation struggles to adjust to a world where itis no longer the uncontested source of technological progress.

“For Americans, the idea that the future is now being created elsewhere — not in the United States — is a hard reality to accept,” said Afra Wang, a Silicon Valley-based tech writer. “This isn’t just about technology; it’s a question of identity.”