Silicon Valley Has China Envy, and That Reveals a Lot About America

Silicon Valley has a China envy problem.

In social media posts, podcasts, interviews and newsletters, the elites of the American tech sector are marveling at China’s speed in building infrastructure, its manufacturing might and the ingenuity of the A.I. company DeepSeek. At the same time, they are lamenting aging 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 grueling “996” work culture, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week.

“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 re-evaluated.

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 it is no longer the uncontested source of technological progress.