At Google’s presentation at the APEC Digital Weeks in Chengdu on July 23, 2026, twins were not the focus.
Evelyn Cheng | CNBC
BEIJING – The artificial intelligence race between the United States and China is heating up on the world’s largest continent: Asia.
“The American strategy is to stop China from becoming the leading AI supplier to the rest of Asia … and, frankly, the world,” said Gary Dvorchak, chief executive of Blueshirt Group. While China’s alternatives are cheaper, he pointed out that the US currently offers a more comprehensive solution from chips to AI models.
But the U.S. sales challenge was highlighted this month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Digital Weeks in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu.
The U.S. left few public traces of its involvement in the event, although a U.S. official and a U.S. business representative at APEC both highlighted AI in promoting the Chengdu event earlier this year. The muted US presence comes after Anthropic suffered a setback in releasing its Fable AI model due to abrupt policy changes in the US, and new Chinese AI models have recently brought similar capabilities to market at far cheaper prices.
In contrast, Michael Kratsios, President Donald Trump’s chief science and technology policy adviser, highlighted the U.S. AI action plan and the establishment of the American AI export program at the first APEC AI meeting in South Korea last summer, according to a transcript of his remarks at the White House.
However, earlier this month Politico quoted three former officials in reporting that the Commerce Department had so far received fewer than expected 78 applications for America’s AI export program.
And on July 24, at a high-level APEC forum on AI organized by China’s cybersecurity regulator, Bill Guidera, deputy undersecretary for innovation and engagement at the U.S. Department of Commerce, still focused on the AI export program, according to materials reviewed by CNBC.
He called for partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region broadly, noting that buyers can purchase a full U.S. technology stack or just parts through the export program. “It is the brilliant design that shows the strength, safety and performance of US AI,” Guidera said.
The Commerce Ministry’s International Trade Administration confirmed in a July 29 social media post that Guidera spoke in Chengdu. When asked about the Politico report, an ITA spokesperson said the number of applications “exceeded our expectations.” The White House did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Exhibitions by American companies were also limited. According to CNBC, Google and Meta were the only U.S. companies that had booths at APEC on July 23, including booths for Thailand and China, most of which were Chengdu-based companies. The two US companies each placed emphasis on the AlphaFold molecular AI system and AI applications for small businesses rather than large language models.
Wilson L. White, vice president of government affairs at Google, only mentioned Gemini in passing in a July 24 speech Tencent Following White, Vice President Cai Guangzhong took the stage to highlight the growing acceptance of his Hunyuan LLM and a cloud project in Thailand.
Table of Contents
Beijing’s AI diplomacy
China is hosting APEC this year, coming at a critical time in US-China tensions and tech rivalry.
Beijing has doubled down on the opportunity to highlight its AI capabilities, which are largely open-source models compared to largely closed US models.
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the World AI Conference in Shanghai on July 17 that China will provide 5,000 opportunities for AI training and seminars to developing countries, while developing AI application cooperation centers with Southeast Asia and other regions.
Beijing then dispatched a senior official, Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, to join other Asia-Pacific countries in promoting technology standards development at the ministerial-level APEC Digital Weeks on July 23. Later that day, the 21 member countries, including the US, agreed to support open source AI with “strong security”.
“‘Advocacy’ of open source models with strong security guarantees gives China’s open weight strategy greater regional legitimacy, especially in emerging Asian economies where deployment costs and technological sovereignty are important considerations,” said Wei Sun, chief artificial intelligence analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Forced integration
But rather than a world divided into spheres of American and Chinese AI, Sun expects a combination of these technologies, particularly in Asia.
With more than 1,300 living languages in Southeast Asia alone, using a US or Chinese AI model is not as easy as it seems.
Governments in Asia and elsewhere are spending “billions” on AI systems tailored to local languages, according to privately funded startup Votee AI. CEO Pak-Sun Ting said he is working with at least five governments, including two in Southeast Asia, and that the startup is already generating well over $10 million in revenue per year.
Ting said companies in Southeast Asia tend to use Nvidia chips, particularly for AI training, but could also use other chips to power models. He noted that Votee’s open source model for Cantonese speakers was developed in part using Alibaba’s open source Qwen model.
The ability of AI to generate economic returns remains critical, regardless of origin.
“While the U.S. and China compete fiercely through different approaches to AI technology and diplomacy, they ultimately cannot completely decouple from each other,” said Yue Su, chief economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
She noted that the small U.S. presence at APEC was not surprising given other events, such as an AI summit in San Francisco on July 24.
South Korea’s Ministry of Technology organized the event, where President Lee Jae-myung sought to build on Korean chip and AI megaprojects by meeting with US pioneering AI model leaders Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
—CNBC’s Jenny Lee contributed to this report.
Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/30/us-wants-asia-to-use-its-ai-but-china-dominates-cheaper-models.html
