China could generate more than 100 artificial-intelligence breakthroughs on the scale of the DeepSeek large language model within 18 months, former People’s Bank of China deputy governor Zhu Min told the World Economic Forum’s ‘Summer Davos’ in Tianjin. Zhu said the coming wave of software innovations would “fundamentally change the tech nature of the whole Chinese economy,” citing the country’s deep pool of engineers, vast consumer market and state support for strategic industries. DeepSeek, unveiled in January, has emerged as a low-cost rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and has already attracted 125 million downloads. Banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered are internally testing the model, while Saudi Aramco has installed it in its main data centre. Major U.S. cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google also offer DeepSeek to customers, despite data-security concerns that have led Washington to bar the app from some government devices. ChatGPT remains the market leader with about 910 million downloads, but Zhu’s forecast underscores intensifying competition between Washington and Beijing for global AI dominance. China awards roughly 3.57 million engineering degrees each year and, according to industry tallies, 65 of the world’s top 100 AI researchers are Chinese—advantages Beijing hopes will offset U.S. curbs on high-end Nvidia chips and other advanced technology. Analysts say broad international adoption of Chinese AI systems could shift both economic influence and technological standards heading into the 2030s.