At the 2026 China Chief Economists Forum Annual Meeting, Liu Yuhui, a council member of the China Chief Economists Forum, delivered a speech titled "The Scoreboard of National Destiny." He stated that over the past year, China has consistently "scored points" in the G2 rivalry, evident in trade, finance, and asset prices, driving capital market performance fueled by "grand narratives." The AI revolution has now entered its second half, where the competitive focus shifts from the capitalization of computing power to its penetration and the construction of an industrial ecosystem. The ultimate determinant of victory hinges on power supply and manufacturing capabilities—precisely China's core strengths. Leveraging robust engineering optimization capabilities, a complete industrial chain, and a development path focused on "edge AI," China is poised to dominate the second half of the AI revolution and complete the industrial closed loop. He believes that, in the long run, the "scoreboard" of national destiny will unequivocally show the East prevailing over the West. The full transcript of his speech follows:
Distinguished guests, welcome to the annual Chief Economists Forum. Many of you likely watched Elon Musk's recent interview at his Gigafactory a few days ago; personally, I found it profoundly impactful. Musk asserted that the world is currently at the epicenter of a supersonic tsunami-level transformation. Integrating our recent research, from an economic perspective, this wave of artificial intelligence is fundamentally颠覆ing the traditional production function of the human economy.
As we know, the production function of the human economy comprises three core elements: capital, labor, and technology. The rise of AI is now systematically and comprehensively substituting for labor—not just manual labor (which will also be replaced with the proliferation of robots in the future). The first wave directly targets the high-quality labor force cultivated through substantial investment in education. Musk mentioned that by 2025's level of AI development, over half of white-collar jobs will be rapidly replaced; by 2030, perhaps all white-collar work could vanish. He even depicted a specific scenario: within three years, even the most顶尖 surgeons will be unemployed, replaced by robots. This underscores his point that we are indeed amidst a supersonic tsunami-level change.
As labor is progressively replaced by AI on a massive scale, and intelligence increasingly becomes an external "alien species" diverging from humanity, all the theories and models found in past macroeconomics textbooks have, in fact, been彻底颠覆ed. In a sense, macroeconomics today has "died," leaving behind only grand narratives.
Now, this supersonic tsunami-level transformation described by Musk恰好 intertwines with our era's core narrative—the contest of national destiny between the G2. This makes the future world brim with infinite possibilities yet潜藏 extreme turbulence, where volatility and prosperity will coexist and intertwine. This is both the future world led by AI and the era defined by G2 national destiny competition.
I recall last year's forum was about a week earlier than this year's, around January 6th if memory serves. Looking back at my keynote speech then, I correctly identified one thing: the core contradiction within Western powers (particularly the United States) and indeed the entire Western world has undergone a颠覆ive shift. Simply put, since Trump's election, the West's core矛盾 has evolved into an intense ideological confrontation between left and right, fundamentally overturning the global geopolitical landscape.
Over the past year, we have clearly observed the evolution of G2 relations from "Decoupling" towards a deeper, more negotiated "Deal" phase, a shift I believe everyone has felt keenly. This year, my focus has primarily been on two matters.
The first, and the core of today's speech, is the "scoreboard" of Sino-US national destiny. How has the marginal change and dynamic evolution of the "East prevailing over West" trend, established over the past year, progressed? This is our most pressing question and a core concern for capital markets. Everyone is aware that Chinese A-shares rose by 1400 points and the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index surged by 10,000 points over the past year. The core driver of this rally has been the "grand narrative"—essentially reflecting China's continuous scoring and breakthroughs within the G2 rivalry.
From the outbreak of the tariff war on April 2nd last year to the present, the final outcome is that only China has returned to pre-war levels, and under more favorable and proactive conditions; meanwhile, all other countries have been subjected to 15%-20% tariffs by the Trump administration. This demonstrates underlying strength: the US attempted to salvage the precarious foundation of dollar hegemony through related legislation and stablecoins, but after more than half a year, the cryptocurrency market directly tied to stablecoins has fallen into a technical bear market. Over the past year, Bitcoin not only failed to rise but fell from $127,000 in September to the $80,000-$90,000 range, struggling to recover; whereas gold surged 70%, US stocks rose 20%, China's ChiNext and STAR 50 Index gained 50%, South Korean stocks jumped 70%, and Japanese equities advanced 20%. As once highly-touted emerging financial stars, Bitcoin and Ethereum actually delivered negative returns last year. All this confirms that the purported "dollar rescue" legislation has been ineffective.
It is China's continuous gains in the G2 national destiny contest that have propelled the valuation uplift of Chinese assets. This explains why the rally's core is the "grand narrative" and valuation repair—a logic that remains valid even during the current corrective phase. Many ask me: "Professor Liu, after the A-share market's 16 consecutive gaining days post-New Year, the bullish sentiment is soaring. What's your forecast for this year's points increase?" Last year, I predicted the A-share index would reach 4000 points; now many inquire about this year's target. Frankly, it's truly difficult to provide a specific number. I often respond with three words: "Bayesian." In the context of Chinese culture, this means "acting according to circumstances and moving with the trend"—we cannot predetermine the outcome, only continuously observe the dynamic changes on the Sino-US national destiny "scoreboard."
If predicting the final outcome of this "contest," I firmly believe it will be "East prevailing over West"; but forecasting tomorrow's "score," or who will break through first, is something I cannot answer definitively. Regarding this process, my consistent mindset is: full of confidence in the Eastern power, while maintaining respect for the Western power. As Chief Zhong Yun mentioned earlier, Trump's team is by no means ordinary; if they can truly bring Venezuela's and Iran's oil resources under control, or secure Greenland, acquiring three massive resource assets, their national power and market capitalization would inevitably experience a phased boost.
Furthermore, the US has a cohort of tech "visionaries" like Musk and Jensen Huang, who continuously construct narratives, envision the future, chart industrial blueprints, and guide humanity's technological path. With such individuals, this country commands our respect. Therefore, this "scoring match" is inevitably a long-term game, not a short-term decisive battle.
The strong start to the year, particularly the impressive 16-day rally, is very notable, especially fueled by the thrilling and振奋ing grand narrative surrounding the current Sino-US "space race," which the market has supported with ample risk appetite. But predicting tomorrow's movements is indeed challenging; we can only proceed step by step, observing as the "scoreboard" changes in real-time.
The second matter I focus on is the concretization of the underlying industrial logic behind the aforementioned national destiny contest. This round of industry revolution led by Sci-Tech AI, since the emergence of ChatGPT in early 2023, is nearly three years old. At this three-year mark, the revolution is undergoing a "transition"—moving from the first half to the second half. In the first half, humanity invested massive capital expenditure on the computing power supply side; entering the second half, our core concern is: how can the accumulated technological potential be transformed into genuine commercial logic? Can a complete industrial ecosystem be built at the AI backend, allowing the huge capital invested upfront to form a virtuous economic closed loop, ultimately fulfilling the mission of this industrial revolution? This is not only China's concern but also the core focus for the US in the second half of the AI era.
The core of the first half was the "capitalization of computing power"—following the "scaling law," where denser accumulation of computing power yields more significant effects, leading parties to pour huge capital into a computing power "arms race." The core of the second half will be the "penetration rate of computing power": computing costs will continue to decline, generative/content-based large models will transition towards physical/action-oriented large models, and AI will achieve deep, widespread integration with hardware. This is the core logic of "edge AI"—how AI, through integration with edge devices and hardware, permeates all sectors of the economy and society, building a complete industrial ecosystem.
This is the pattern of every industrial revolution: after the highway is built, the core of the second half is "traffic volume"—the number of vehicles on the road, and the industrial ecosystem and urbanization processes connected by the road. The highway itself might not be profitable, but all profitable businesses will operate依托ing on it. Today's AI revolution stands at precisely such a historical juncture.
So, what lies at the end of AI competition? Musk's three-hour interview is particularly worthy of attention; its core view is: the ultimate determinants of AI competition are only two—power supply and manufacturing capability. Whoever masters power and possesses strong manufacturing capabilities will ultimately complete the mission of this AI industrial revolution. And the answer? I believe everyone here already has a clear answer in mind. The performance of global major asset classes over the past year (2025) has fully confirmed this underlying logic.
Currently, the world's largest core problem focuses on the Western power's dollar system. The best-performing major asset class in 2025 was gold—soaring 70% annually, skyrocketing from $2,600/oz to $4,500/oz, a increase that deeply shocked us macroeconomic scholars. At the China Gold Association annual meeting in October 2024, I predicted gold was entering a rapid appreciation phase, but I never anticipated such a staggering surge. This reflects a severe crisis of confidence among global capital in the foundational credit of the US dollar—namely, the fiat system comprised of the dollar and US Treasuries, implying deep-seated risks within this "old money system." The future trajectory of gold critically depends on whether a solution can be found for the core problem underpinning dollar credit. Currently, the outlook is not optimistic, with no effective resolution in sight.
Over the past year, the US Dollar Index weakened, falling 10%, but the core reason it hasn't collapsed completely is that the US has staked its final national destiny and dollar credit on implementing an "All in AI" national strategy to compete with China in national destiny. This has also created the core engine for global risk asset valuations—the boom cycle of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX). The current rise in US stocks is primarily driven by this index; America's "All in AI" strategy has spawned a strong SOX cycle, driving significant gains in all assets related to its supply chain globally: the US Sci-Tech AI chain's market cap grew by $7 trillion, South Korean stocks rose 70% (core driven by Samsung and SK Hynix's memory businesses), Japanese stocks gained 20% (core in materials sector), and China's ChiNext/STAR 50 Index advanced 50% (core being the supporting产业链 for the SOX cycle—optical modules surged 6-fold, with PCB materials, resins, liquid cooling, power supplies, connectors, even server racks and backplanes seeing substantial increases). The premium on Chinese assets in this round essentially revolves around the SOX cycle.
Therefore, while the dollar is weak, it hasn't collapsed, primarily because "All in AI" has generated vast amounts of Sci-Tech and AI capital. New financial instruments reflecting the technological credit of Sci-Tech AI (such as cryptocurrencies) have become the core support behind the dollar. This衍生出一个关键逻辑: The US's "All in AI" strategy cannot afford any misstep. The US must maintain its global AI leadership; losing this advantage would risk a "cataclysmic" collapse of its strategic foundation. The high volatility of the AI industry will directly lead to剧烈波动 in Sci-Tech market capitalization—hence we witnessed US stocks pulling off a historically rare massive rally last year, but a similar剧烈波动 might occur at some point this year.
Under this underlying logic, gold's rise may have no ceiling, as it is backed by持续承压 on dollar credit. The core focus of the global economy is the dollar; the core focus of the dollar is "All in AI"; and this brings us back to the concretized industrial映射—the "All in AI" strategy is facing the transition to the second half. Who can complete this transition's mission? Who can ultimately achieve the ultimate goal of this Sci-Tech AI industrial revolution? Currently, it appears the Americans will struggle to complete this mission, primarily because the US lacks a strong manufacturing foundation. Given its current economic structure, the US is increasingly becoming a pure exporter of technological blueprints—entrepreneurs like Musk and Huang can描绘出宏大,前瞻性的 blueprints and provide top-tier designs, but in terms of implementation capability and building a complete industrial ecosystem, the US is overstretched.
This historical mission ultimately falls on the shoulders of the Eastern power (China). Musk even admitted in his interview: "Every time I present a PPT, I'm the first to propose the concept, but it's always the Chinese who最终落地完成 it." This AI revolution is no exception. Because in the second half, the core task is to establish a powerful, complete industrial ecosystem at the backend, enabling the invested huge capital to form a循环闭环—this is precisely the core mission of "edge AI."
What is "edge AI"? Simply put, it means humanity trains various large models using computing power to build a software ecosystem; then embeds this ecosystem into various hardware peripherals, forming "intelligent agents," ultimately achieving comprehensive AI penetration. This process can only be completed by China: the落地 of large models relies on China's super-strong engineering optimization capabilities—today, the global AI application development ecosystem widely adopts Chinese base models like Qwen and智谱; while the production of hardware peripherals leverages the强大实力 (power) of Chinese manufacturing—excelling at producing high-quality, cost-effective products, from手机演进 and smart wearables, to drones, EVs, and future robots, all core carriers for "edge AI." China will embed the ecosystem of open-source and base models into various cost-effective hardware products, selling them globally to achieve capital回流; simultaneously, edge devices continuously generate rich scenarios and data, which are fed back into the AI system for deep data mining (like US AI data mining companies do), producing digital assets; these digital assets enter the financial system, initiating new credit expansion cycles—this is China's AI strategy.
It can be said that China has already conceptualized the complete framework for the backend of the Sci-Tech AI industrial revolution; the next step is steady advancement and execution. In the long run, regarding the "scoreboard" of national destiny, my conclusion is very clear: it will unequivocally be the East prevailing over the West. My speech ends here. Thank you all!
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