US vs China: The Battle For Tech Supremacy | NexTech

Who's going to win the tech war between China and the United States? So, I've just asked the world's two most popular AI chat box who's going to win. Deepseek is saying the clear winner is likely to result in a bifurcation.

While Chat GBT is saying, well, the winner depends on how success is defined. Clearly, there's some diplomacy going on. Well, here on Next Tech, we're going to put some of the top products to the test.

[Music] [Music] A new cold war, but not the ed with spies in trench codes or missiles in silos. This one is being fought in factories, server farms and government offices where lines of code and nano circuits hold more power than tanks ever could. The United States and China are locked in a highstakes battle not just for influence but control of the future.

AI, quantum computing, 5G, semiconductors. Whoever wins here won't just dominate the global economy, they'll dictate the rules of the 21st century. And when competition isn't enough, there's always the nuclear option.

Tariffs to trade wars, bans to blacklists. Google is blocking Chinese technology giant Huawei from future updates to some of its phone apps. Huawei is something that's very dangerous.

Washington debates whether to ban Tik Tok over national security concerns. The breaking news overnight, the social media app Tik Tok going dark as a US ban goes into effect. President Biden is taking a hard line on Chinese imports charging a 100% tariff on electric vehicles and it has emerged as a real player in the AI arms race.

It's called Deep Seek. With the rapid rise of the Chinese artificial intelligence software Deep Seek, US lawmakers are looking to ban it from government devices. Technology shares on Wall Street have fallen sharply in response to the emergence of a lowcost chatbot built by a Chinese artificial intelligence firm.

It started out as just a rumor, China's AI breakthrough. Then Deep Seek dropped and Silicon Valley panicked. A homegrown Chinese model powerful enough to challenge open AI's chat GBT trained on vast data sets fluent, creative, and almost human.

Within hours, tech stocks nosedived. Trillions of dollars vanished, leaving investors asking themselves, is this the Splutnick moment in the AI race? The US stock market and the news from China today that sent tech stocks tumbling.

One US company, Nvidia, had the biggest single day drop in history. Backed by Microsoft and fueled by billions, open AI was supposed to be unstoppable. Now Beijing has its own answer.

President Xi's red envelope message to his US counterpart could have been, "You may have Elon Musk, but I have my own tech titans. " No longer is this just about software. It's also about hardware.

semiconductors, supercomputers, and satellites, and of course, the device in your pocket. For years, Apple dominated. Then came Huawei.

The first Trump administration tried to kill it. Blacklists, sanctions, and cutting off US chips. It worked, but only for a while.

But as the old adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention. So, China adapted, grew, found new suppliers, and Huawei is back. On the one side, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, sleek, powerful, and packed with AI.

On the other, Huawei's Mate X6, foldable, cutting edge, and running on China's own silicon. This isn't just a battle of smartphones. It's a symbol of something bigger.

Can China break free from US tech? And can the US stay ahead? The war for the future isn't coming.

It's already in the palm of your hands. So, Huawei was actually generous enough to send me their latest flagship foldable phone, the Mate X6. And while this isn't an unboxing and testing product, I'm going to try to show you uh what this phone looks like.

Now, for somebody who's been using the iPhone for over 10 years, I feel very comfortable with it. And as a firsttime Huawei user, uh the experience for me, at least at the beginning, was a bit cumbersome. And the current trade war between the United States and China and the effects can clearly be seen in this user experience.

Now, Huawei no longer uses uh Android as the operating system. It's actually developed its own system called Harmony and because of the trade war and because of the sanctions and because of some of the restrictions it has to develop a lot of its own stuff in its game center in entertainment center uh applications that we're uh use on our daily life whether it's Google maps it it's not available so you have to go through secondary apps to actually make it accessible and not only that Huawei has actually developed their own maps as well unsurprisingly declined trying to cooperate, but that's fine. I have one right here.

The cameras are better. The AI is way smarter. The battery, well, at the end of the day, it's still an iPhone.

It's the kind of device that makes you feel like the future is just a tap away until you realize that the future might not belong to the US anymore. So, we're putting it to the test. One interview, two phones, one American, one Chinese.

iPhone versus Huawei. Apple's best against China's comeback king. Well, to me, the interesting thing is that we're not comparing like for like when we're looking at Apple versus Huawei because of course Huawei does not produce Apple compatible phones.

It's uh phones and I had one a while ago and they're very good phones. Its phones are and based on Android. So, I would be looking at Samsung versus uh Huawei as the market leaders entering into battle.

But Huawei's got a long way, whether it's battling Apple or um the rest of the Android market. I think uh Huawei's got a long way to claw back to where it was just a few years ago. In terms of its effort to claw back, do you think it being at a lower price point is one of the uh attractive characteristics for for customers out there?

Oh, a lower price point is always pleasant. Um I think though that there is we've got to take into account the geopolitical situation. It wasn't the technology or the price that lost Huawei its market share a few years back.

It was the fact that there was there were suspicions about things that Huawei was putting into its infrastructure products certainly in the UK and elsewhere. I make no comment on whether those allegations were correct or not. Huawei denied them vehemently we should say.

Uh but um it wasn't the you know pricing will certainly help but it wasn't the pricing that stopped it. it was the geopolitical situation which has just over the last in this year become very unstable again. So, um I think there's going to be factors outside the technology that affect it.

Guy, it's good to have you back. We're on the iPhone right now. Um, when you look at sort of the the the chat box uh realm, obviously chat GBT was the 800 lb gorilla in this realm and then all of a sudden essentially Deep Seek came out of nowhere and made a big splash in terms of the uh the capabilities and the development phase.

How do you how do you evaluate Deep Seek? Well, funnily enough, Deep Seek and uh particularly the people in China developing it didn't share with me how long they've been working on it, how long has it actually taken them. Uh but as a piece of hijacking the market, actually hijacking sounds negative as a piece of entering the market, it was quite spectacular.

Uh so I'd be interested to know what else they've got going on under the bonnet in the um in those labs. Uh chat GPT for me was unique because it uh didn't do so much marketing. It just sort of arrived.

Um, and I'm used to people spending a fortune on marketing. It's not a coincidence that people like Apple have uh dominated the market or Samsung or whoever. It's because they spend an absolute fortune.

Chat GPT didn't. So, I think this is these things are going to spread virally and I don't think we've got that many precedents to look at. The United States has just announced a a new round of uh sanctions.

But when you look at this ongoing trade war, do you feel that it benefits uh or plays to the Chinese hand in terms of developing their own technologies? They're also um not just sanctions but the restrictions when it comes to uh microchips. Yeah, I think the difficulty is going to be uh that um America coming up against say some of the individual countries in Europe uh where you and I are based and and um attaching sanctions is one thing because we can't really hit back.

They're very small where America hitting out against China and China uh offering reprisals. These are the big gorillas fighting each other and I think they they basically need to talk because uh they're um it's I can't see any actual winner. The global battle for tech supremacy isn't new.

Back in the 1980s, America's main economic and tech rival was a surging Japan. Companies like Sony, Nintendo, and Toshiba were dominating US living rooms with their televisions, video games, and microchips. But a lost decade brought Japan's meteoric rise to a crashing halt.

Could that same fate befall China and its tech rise? I sat down with a well-known Turkish tech journalist to take apart this global tech war. When you look at technology, one of the things that strikes um you is the rate of advancement, the rate of uh new things that are that are put out there and it's super fast.

Uh what we see one year uh next year may not be as important and the rate of advancement is just amazing. I'm wondering what you think could be some of the areas in which these two countries could battle over in the future. Space exploration and satellites.

Space could be the new stage for rivalry. Both countries have a big plans for the moon and beyond which suggest that there could be a rivalry over basing on the moon or controlling satellite networks for communications or positioning systems. In short, space is fast becoming an area of strategic competition for superpowers.

6G and future communications following the competition in 5G. We are likely to see fierce competition in the next competition technology such as 6G. Whoever sets the communications standards and patents of the future will have a huge global advantage.

So both the US and China will want to take a lead in this area. Other subject clean energy technologies. We may also see a battle in the field of green technologies.

Both countries are investing heavily in electric vehicles, advanced batteries and renewable energy. Leadership in these areas is important for economic gain and energy security. For example, dominance in production of electric vehicle batteries or solar panels could become a matter of prestige and dispute in the future.

If you really want to know what a phone can really do, then take it outside. So here we're in Otto, Istanul, one of the dozens of scenic locations out on the Bosphorus. It's still the early morning hours, so the bustling crowds haven't arrived yet.

And it just so happens to be the perfect place to put the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Huawei Mate X6 to the test. And since we're here, we need to shoot something. Real footage, real world conditions.

Let's see what these phones can really do. Both cameras impressive. The iPhone delivers that classic Apple polish.

Sharp and balanced, almost too perfect. The Mate X6, bold, vivid, and a little more dramatic. Almost as if it's trying to prove something.

Apps run smooth on both. But here's where it gets interesting. No Google on the Huawei and no iMessage on the iPhone if you're in China.

Two ecosystems, two competing visions of the future. No room to get lost. If the tech war isn't in your pocket, it's out on the road.

Heading in one direction, Tesla, Elon Musk's electric empire and face of American innovation. And in the other lane, China's EV giants BYD already outs selling Tesla worldwide and Hongchi, China's answer to luxury and power. The US is watching, perhaps worried.

Chinese EVs are cheaper, have more variety, and are getting better fast. So, what do you do when you're losing your lead in the race? You move the goalposts.

new US tariffs on Chinese EVs and big ones. President Trump says he will put a 25% tariff on all foreign vehicles and auto parts imported into the US. Washington says it's about fairness.

Beijing says it's protectionism. Either way, the message is clear. The road ahead isn't just about speed.

It's about survival. Just like the phones, to understand a car, you don't just read the spec sheet, you drive it. So, that's exactly what we're going to do.

First, Tesla. I'll be taking it across IstAnul's newest transcontinental bridge, leaving Europe behind and heading into Asia. Then, we switch it up.

The return journey, Hongchi HS9, China's luxury EV Challenger. Again, two countries, two visions of the future on one stretch of highway. I'm also going to be filming my demos with the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Huawei Mate X6 to see which one works better in motion.

But before we hit the road, we need our fitting equivalent of a petrol head. Enter Chhattai, an expert in electric vehicles and a guy who knows both vehicles inside out. Right now, we're walking around the Tesla.

sleek, minimalist, unmistakably American. But does it still lead the pack? One steering wheel, one giant screen with the convenient uh to use and extra features that most of the car brands doesn't even use and doesn't even think about it.

And you have two phone chargers with the good angles that you see your phone uh you can follow your notification. And uh there is no extra extra buttons, just one screen, one steering wheel. That's it.

When you're stepping into a luxury car, um you can see sort of wood paneling, um metal, metal rings, aluminum. It's been used throughout the car. There isn't any of that here.

So Tesla is essentially going after uh simplicity um and just easy to use. Yeah, easy to use. In the manufacturer side also they try to reduce the costes so they can produce more car and uh they uh penetrate the market more aggressively.

They are using the simple materials. It's not that uh cheap that the people talking about is quality but not luxury as like the hon. Behind the wheel of the Tesla Model Y the first thing you notice the silence.

When Elon Musk stormed onto the scene, Tesla wasn't supposed to win. Legacy automakers laughed at the idea of an allect electric future. Then Elon Musk proved them wrong.

Behind the wheel, the Tesla Model Y feels exactly how you would expect. It is quick, it is responsive, and it is effortlessly smooth. The instant torque makes accelerating almost addictive, launching you forward with that signature EV punch.

And this is even more pronounced in the performance model of this car. Tesla has long been the dominant name in electric vehicles, but Chinese EV brands are proving to be serious challengers. BYD's revenue topped the $100 billion mark last year and edged out Tesla.

The overall verdict, the Tesla Model Y isn't perfect, but it doesn't have to be. It is fast, it's practical, and it's packed with tech. If you've never heard of Hongchi, here's a quick primer.

This is China's oldest and most prestigious automotive brand. Think of it as the Rolls-Royce of the people's republic. So that's the outside.

How about the inside? It has a different mindset from Tesla. Uh this has a uh special uh screen for me, a special screen for you.

And uh we have a common screen for the climate control, uh the cameras, the trunk and the automatic pilot uh and the the hill holder function. And uh this has a little bit different mindset. Uh it's try to flex with the uh secret technology and try to immersive try to create an immersive environment for you.

We have adjusted a bit cluster for the uh heating and the massaging function for the seats. Talking about massaging functions, these seats also have uh ventilation as well. Yes, ventilation.

So um very comfortable drive during uh the summer months. Yeah. Opposite to the Tesla, you have the ventilation also.

Okay. And you want to turn that on? Yeah, sure.

Can press this button. Massage and ventilation. I don't know what else I could ask for more.

And you have the pillow also in your back. I don't want to get out. You don't want to get out.

It's like a home. It's a beautiful vehicle. Once reserved for state officials and parades, Hongchi has now set its sights on the luxury EV market.

And the HS9 is its bold take no prisoners entry into the high-end SUV space. On the road, the Hongchi HS9 moves with the effortless confidence that you would expect with a flagship luxury vehicle like this. The suspension in the car is tuned for comfort and it soaks up all the bumps like they barely even exist on the road.

And when you look at the cabin, it remains almost whisper quiet, even at the highway speeds that we're traveling at. Overall, I think it's fair to say that this car is meant for grand entrances and not tight hairpin turns. Chai knows both cars well, especially their strengths and weaknesses, and what features consumers prefer when it comes to EVs.

The Tesla is mainly focusing on technologies and system software and it has a flowless soft system software and this one is Honchi HS9 is giving the maximum luxury and giving the maximum right quality and on the other hand uh Tesla you buying an iPad on the four wheels most like the people try to describe the car like that uh there are the two main differences budget and luxury. way in this B of cars. You mentioned budget.

I would assume that if a person is going to go out and buy an electric vehicle, that's going to be one of the uh the prime factors that they take into consideration. What are some of the the other things that a potential buyer looks into? For the Turkish buyers is the price is the most important thing.

The second is range and the range is depend on the heat pump. And uh if there is heat pump also you have to uh lean on the weather prices, weather uh conditions and the car IO dynamics. Uh there are some of the different uh difference makers uh that uh also play some role in the range uh specification and the range is second one.

The third one is service because people try to uh avoid the service factor uh service maintenance uh pricing but uh if you have a wide availability in your service as a uh car makers and you will be one step uh above the rest of the car manufacturers. Do you feel that um the trade war that's been going on between the United States and China and the two countries sort of imposing tariffs uh import taxes is essentially going to affect how much penetration uh they're able to get in in markets? Sure.

Uh let's see from the Tesla. Uh this is standard range version. There is no uh extra luxury taxes.

uh this is uh stay below the 10%. But the long range and performance getting to the 60% and price is getting increasing uh so quickly for this funi also you getting uh custom taxes or the 60% because it's coming from China. Mhm.

That's why they are not penetrating with different models. also Chinese companies obligates to the uh serving seven uh different part of Turkey with the 20 different services. We try to establish that also for the honi uh there are so many obligations, so many sanctions uh so many uh hinders uh so many barriers to uh not let the Chinese or American people uh to penetrate the market.

Yeah, it's happened right now. After all the testing, all the driving, all the late night doom scrolling, what stands out most? The iPhone is classic Apple.

It's a device that doesn't want to surprise you. Just redefine what you already know. The Huawei Mate, on the other hand, feels like a statement.

A bold, rebellious, we don't need you anymore kind of phone. foldable, futuristic, a little rough around the edges, but undeniably impressive. Then there's the cars.

Tesla Model Y, still a thrill. Instant power, minimalist design that screams Silicon Valley confidence, but the Hongchi, that one surprised me. Plush, quiet, built like a rolling executive suite.

less about tech wizardry and more about luxury and presence. China's own answer to what an EV should be. That is the pattern.

American technology feels like it's an evolution. Refined, predictable, perhaps even safe. Chinese technology, it's aggressive, ambitious, chaotic at times, but always pushing forward.

So, who's winning? Well, it all depends on what you want. familiarity or reinvention.

But one thing is for sure and that's the United States no longer has a tech world for itself. Well, that's it for this edition of Next Tech. I'm Ali Jan and we'll see you next time.