That was how Elon and Li Qiang kicked start China’s EV revolution with just one plant in Shanghai.
One thing that makes Chinese state capitalism and socialism different from the Soviet bloc is that CPC actually encourages fierce cut-throat domestic competitions under its watch to build internationally competitive champion tech firms, regardless whether they were private or SOEs. And of course, private national champions (like Huawei, BYD, DJI, Xiaomi, etc.) are usually more competitive.
EV industry is different altogether to the AI chip sector in which Nvidia is completely dominant with an established ecosystem and a long established presence /product where the technology keeps moving even faster. Plus China had the advantage of targeting and investing in EV sector early before almost any country actually. It’s not the case with GPU/AI CHIPS/semiconductor sector.
For one, Nvidia was already present in China for sometime before the sanctions and restrictions kicked in. When Nvidia was present in the Chinese market they had a total dominance and almost zero competition(ask yourself why. lol) since the barrier to entry into this sector is huge and even more complicated by the fact that almost all the worlds AI systems are built on Nvidias platform/ecosystem. Since they are all deeply integrated into many AI, research, and professional applications. This means developers have built their code and workflows around CUDA, so migrating from this is so difficult for any company who has already built their system on that.It’s a it like the operating system sector where barrier to entry and breakthrough is so high it’s almost impossible outside the 2 established players. So the only way to get your own product to be adopted by other players is to have a restrictive market where these companies have no choice but to build their products again on your software platform. Else it’s almost impossible to breakthrough and compete with the established players.Since there is no point for any private company to waste her capital and time to rebuild their product on your untested platform when they already have a long established and more advance one readily available for them for years.
Secondly , Nvidia also has a long establishes history coupled with a large ecosystem of software tools, libraries, and drivers that seamlessly integrate with their GPUs which many companies have already adopted. So competing with that is a tough task.
Do you think the CCP is stupid to tell Chinese companies not to purchase Nvidia H20 this time around ? They recognize exactly the point I have made. Huawei will have to be given some space to grow and established herself in this sector first before they can stand a co since of competing head to head with Nvidia. If you make Nvidia get all the market like before even in Huaweis own home market where it’s the only place they can actually get their product used and tested and grow(Nvidia already totally dominate to world) then forget about competing .lol. This is not a case of free market principles anymore like other industries/sectors.
