Introduction: The US Dollar’s Dominance in Global Finance and the Pressures it Faces

The US dollar’s rise to global dominance has been nothing short of remarkable. Following World War II, the dollar solidified its role as the world’s primary reserve currency through the Bretton Woods Agreement, which pegged many currencies to the dollar and set up the US currency as the central anchor for international finance. The dollar’s dominance has been further reinforced by its role in commodities trading, foreign exchange reserves, and global banking systems.

The currency’s strength is rooted in a few key factors: the size and stability of the US economy, the breadth and depth of the US financial markets, and the relative liquidity and safety of US assets. In essence, the US dollar has served as a pillar of global economic stability.

Yet, the dollar is not impervious to the shifting tides of global economic policy. Over recent years, its strength has been challenged by both external and internal factors. Emerging economies, in particular, have sought ways to reduce their dependence on the dollar, while established economies like the European Union and China are actively promoting alternatives to the greenback in international transactions. As the US faces its own set of economic challenges, the question arises: Can the dollar maintain its strength in the face of global shifts?

Current State of the Dollar: Why It Remains Strong Despite Challenges

Despite increasing pressures from global competitors, the US dollar remains remarkably strong. Several factors contribute to the dollar’s continued dominance:

The US Economy’s Resilience and Size

The United States remains the world’s largest economy, which is one of the primary reasons for the dollar’s continued strength. With a GDP exceeding $25 trillion, the size and stability of the US economy provide an anchor for global trade. This massive economic base generates the demand necessary to keep the dollar in widespread circulation. The relative stability of the US financial system and its robust institutions further contribute to the dollar’s appeal. Investors see US assets, particularly Treasury securities, as safe havens during times of uncertainty, which provides ongoing demand for the dollar.

The Liquidity of US Financial Markets

The liquidity of US financial markets is another major factor keeping the dollar strong. The US capital markets are the largest and most liquid in the world, with trillions of dollars in daily trading activity. This depth of market activity makes the dollar an attractive option for investors, central banks, and corporations worldwide. The ability to quickly buy and sell assets denominated in dollars without major price fluctuations creates confidence in the dollar’s utility.

Global Trade and Commodities Pricing

The dollar’s role in global trade is another critical factor in its strength. The greenback is the dominant currency in commodities markets, with oil, gold, and other key commodities priced in dollars. This pricing system ensures continued demand for the dollar, especially in the oil market, where the phenomenon known as the “petrodollar” has helped maintain dollar demand across borders. Even countries that are pursuing alternatives to the dollar for international trade still find it difficult to avoid the greenback in commodity transactions.

Central Bank Reserves

The US dollar remains the world’s most widely held reserve currency. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), over 59% of global foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. This high percentage is largely driven by the fact that many central banks prefer to hold dollar-denominated assets due to the liquidity and stability they provide. While central banks in some emerging markets have sought to diversify their foreign exchange reserves into other currencies, such as the euro or the Chinese yuan, the dollar continues to dominate the global reserve currency market.

Global Trust in the US Financial System

Trust in the US financial system remains high, despite occasional political turmoil or economic disruptions. The Federal Reserve, as the central bank of the US, has earned a reputation for being a reliable and transparent institution. Additionally, the US government’s ability to service its debt and manage fiscal policy, despite the country’s high debt levels, continues to give global investors confidence in the long-term stability of the US dollar.

Global Shifts: How Economic Moves by China, the EU, and Others are Impacting the Dollar’s Role

While the dollar remains strong, emerging economies and global powers like China and the European Union are taking steps to reduce their reliance on it. These economic shifts could ultimately challenge the dollar’s dominance in the future.

China’s Push for the Renminbi

China has long sought to internationalize the renminbi (RMB) and reduce its dependence on the US dollar in global trade. In recent years, China has made significant strides in this direction. The country’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for example, encourages countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe to conduct trade and finance projects using the Chinese currency instead of the dollar. China’s efforts to create financial institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) further reinforce the country’s push for a more prominent role in global finance.

Additionally, China has actively promoted the use of the renminbi in global energy markets, including oil, as evidenced by the launch of the Shanghai International Energy Exchange, which allows oil contracts to be settled in RMB. The People’s Bank of China has also signed currency swap agreements with various countries, enabling them to use RMB for bilateral trade instead of the dollar. These efforts have positioned the renminbi as a legitimate alternative to the dollar, although it still faces significant barriers, such as capital controls and the need for greater market liquidity.

The European Union’s Euro Strategy

The European Union has also explored ways to reduce its reliance on the dollar. The euro, as the second most widely held reserve currency, is often touted as an alternative to the dollar. However, despite the euro’s considerable market share, it has yet to unseat the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency. The EU has attempted to encourage the use of the euro in international trade agreements, including energy transactions, particularly with Russia and other non-EU countries. The creation of the INSTEX payment system, designed to bypass US sanctions and facilitate trade between European countries and Iran, is a notable example of this effort.

Despite these initiatives, the euro’s role in global trade remains limited compared to the dollar. The EU faces internal economic and political challenges, which have hindered the euro’s widespread use outside of Europe. Still, as global economic trends shift, the EU may increasingly position the euro as a viable alternative to the dollar, especially if tensions between the US and Europe continue to grow.

The Rise of Digital Currencies

Another challenge to the US dollar’s dominance comes from the rise of digital currencies, both from private companies and central banks. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others have garnered significant attention as alternative forms of money. While these currencies remain volatile and face regulatory challenges, their rise signals a potential shift away from traditional fiat currencies.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), such as China’s digital yuan, are another factor contributing to the diversification of global monetary systems. CBDCs offer the potential to bypass the US dollar in international transactions, as they can be used directly in cross-border payments without relying on traditional banking systems. If CBDCs gain widespread adoption, they could reduce the demand for the dollar in global trade.

The Future of Dollar Dominance: Predictions and Challenges for the Greenback’s Future

Looking ahead, the US dollar will likely remain a dominant force in the global economy for the foreseeable future. However, its position is increasingly being challenged by a combination of geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts. The question remains: can the dollar retain its preeminent role, or is its dominance on borrowed time?

Challenges to Dollar Dominance

Several factors could threaten the dollar’s dominance in the coming years. A key challenge is the increasing push for alternatives from countries like China and Russia, which are keen to reduce their exposure to the US financial system. As global trade patterns shift and new financial technologies emerge, the dollar may lose its position as the undisputed global currency.

Additionally, US political instability and domestic economic challenges could undermine confidence in the dollar. Prolonged inflation, rising debt levels, or fiscal mismanagement could diminish the appeal of dollar-denominated assets, particularly if investors perceive the US economy as less stable.

Opportunities for the Dollar

Despite these challenges, the dollar remains firmly entrenched in the global financial system. The sheer size of the US economy, the depth of its financial markets, and the trust in US institutions are factors that will continue to support the dollar’s dominance. Furthermore, the US dollar remains the most widely used currency in global trade and finance, and there are no clear alternatives capable of replacing it in the short term.

The Dollar’s Future: A Changing Role?

While the US dollar’s dominance may eventually wane, it is unlikely to disappear entirely in the foreseeable future. Instead, the dollar may face increased competition from other currencies, particularly the euro and the renminbi. The future of the dollar could involve a more multipolar global financial system, where multiple currencies coexist in a more balanced way.

Conclusion

The US dollar has long been a pillar of the global financial system, but its dominance is increasingly being challenged by emerging economies and global shifts in economic power. While the dollar remains strong today due to factors such as the size of the US economy, the liquidity of its financial markets, and its role in global trade, it faces significant competition from alternative currencies like the renminbi and the euro. The rise of digital currencies and the development of central bank digital currencies also pose potential risks to the dollar’s supremacy. However, despite these challenges, the dollar is likely to retain its dominant role for the foreseeable future, although its role may evolve in a changing global economic landscape.

In this article, we’ll explore the factors contributing to China’s economic recovery, the potential risks to that recovery, and how experts predict the future trajectory of the country’s economy. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for investors, policymakers, and global businesses alike, as China’s economic performance has wide-reaching implications for both the domestic and global markets.

1. China’s Economic Recovery: Key Drivers

Post-Pandemic Resurgence

China’s economic recovery began in earnest after the government lifted the strict lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions that had dampened economic activity in 2020 and 2021. The country’s handling of the pandemic through mass testing, quarantine measures, and rapid vaccination campaigns allowed for a quicker reopening compared to other major economies. This jump-started consumer spending, industrial output, and exports.

China’s GDP growth in 2023 has been a reflection of this post-pandemic bounce-back. With large-scale infrastructure projects, increased domestic demand, and revitalized consumer sectors, the recovery has been impressive, but the question remains whether these growth drivers can be maintained in the long term.

Government Stimulus and Investment

The Chinese government has been proactive in supporting economic recovery through fiscal stimulus programs. This includes a combination of tax cuts, infrastructure spending, and loans to businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that were hit hard by the pandemic. Additionally, China has ramped up investments in technology, renewable energy, and the digital economy, which are expected to drive long-term growth.

However, the reliance on government stimulus, while effective in the short term, raises concerns about the sustainability of the recovery. With increasing debt levels and questions about the effectiveness of stimulus in the face of rising inflation, some are wary of the risks posed by further government intervention.

Global Trade and Exports

China’s role as the world’s factory and its dominant position in global trade have been critical to its recovery. Despite global supply chain disruptions, China’s manufacturing sector has managed to rebound strongly, driven by high global demand for electronics, medical supplies, and consumer goods. This has allowed China to maintain robust export growth, which has been a key pillar of the economy.

Yet, the global economic environment is becoming more complex, with geopolitical tensions, trade disputes, and shifting global supply chains. Trade tensions between the U.S. and China, particularly related to technology and tariffs, remain an ongoing concern that could affect China’s export-driven growth in the future.

2. Challenges and Risks to Sustaining the Recovery

Demographic Challenges

One of the most pressing long-term challenges for China is its demographic situation. The country is facing an aging population, which is projected to result in a shrinking labor force in the coming decades. As the working-age population decreases, the pressure on the country’s social welfare system, healthcare, and pensions will increase.

Moreover, China’s historically high savings rates, combined with slower population growth, have led to a reduced consumer base and declining demand in certain sectors, particularly those dependent on the younger population. The government has acknowledged this challenge and is attempting to address it through pro-family policies, such as increasing support for child-rearing, but it remains to be seen how effective these measures will be.

Debt and Real Estate Risks

China’s rapid economic growth over the past few decades has been fueled in part by an enormous accumulation of debt, both at the government and corporate levels. The real estate sector, in particular, has been a major driver of this debt. Major property developers like Evergrande have faced liquidity crises, resulting in defaults and a slowdown in housing construction.

A slowdown in the real estate sector has broader implications for the economy, as it affects consumer confidence, investment, and local government revenues, all of which are closely tied to property values. Despite government efforts to stabilize the sector, the long-term sustainability of the real estate market remains uncertain. If the debt situation in the property sector is not addressed, it could become a major drag on the broader economy.

Environmental and Regulatory Pressures

China’s rapid industrialization over the past few decades has come at a significant environmental cost, and the government is under increasing pressure to address pollution, climate change, and resource management. While China has committed to reaching carbon neutrality by 2060 and has made strides in renewable energy development, transitioning to a greener economy could pose challenges for the industrial sectors that have powered the nation’s growth.

Additionally, China’s regulatory environment has become more stringent in recent years, with the government cracking down on tech companies, tightening financial regulations, and pursuing anti-monopoly measures. While these actions aim to promote long-term stability and sustainable growth, they have led to uncertainty and volatility, particularly in the tech sector.

3. Key Economic Trends to Watch in the Coming Years

The Shift Toward Domestic Consumption

As China’s export-driven growth model faces increasing global challenges, the country is pivoting toward boosting domestic consumption. The government has introduced measures to encourage consumer spending, such as tax breaks, subsidies for electric vehicles, and investments in rural areas. However, the success of this shift will depend on consumers’ confidence, income growth, and the ability to address the rising cost of living.

China’s middle class has been expanding rapidly, and this demographic shift offers significant potential for domestic consumption to become a key driver of future growth. However, it remains to be seen whether the shift will be sufficient to offset declines in exports and external demand.

Innovation and the Tech Sector

China has set ambitious goals to become a global leader in high-tech industries such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, and biotechnology. While the country has made impressive strides in these areas, technological competition from other nations, especially the U.S., could pose challenges.

The government’s push for self-sufficiency in critical technologies, such as semiconductors, reflects China’s efforts to reduce its reliance on foreign tech. The development of homegrown technologies, combined with continued investment in R&D, could provide China with a long-term growth engine, but geopolitical tensions could hinder access to key markets and technologies.

Greater Integration with the Global Economy

While China has traditionally been seen as somewhat isolated in terms of its political and economic policies, the country has been moving toward greater integration with the global economy. Initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and increasing trade partnerships with emerging markets show China’s commitment to expanding its influence in global trade.

At the same time, the country must navigate an increasingly protectionist global environment, with countries like the U.S. pursuing more aggressive policies to limit China’s economic and technological rise. How China balances its domestic economic goals with the realities of a more fragmented global market will be crucial for its long-term economic stability.

4. Conclusion: Will China’s Economic Recovery Be Sustainable?

China’s economic recovery has been impressive, but several challenges could undermine its ability to maintain consistent growth in the long term. Demographic shifts, debt risks, and environmental concerns are major hurdles that the country will need to address. At the same time, the government’s focus on innovation, domestic consumption, and technological development provides a pathway for sustainable growth.

The future trajectory of China’s economy will depend on how effectively the government can manage these challenges while fostering an environment that supports innovation and consumption. While China’s recovery is on track for now, the key question remains: Can these efforts lead to sustained, balanced growth, or will the economy face periodic setbacks that could disrupt progress?

For investors and policymakers alike, the key will be staying informed about China’s evolving economic landscape and adjusting strategies to respond to both opportunities and risks as they emerge. The road ahead for China is not without its challenges, but its ability to adapt and innovate will determine whether its economic recovery can be sustained in the years to come.

The reason for the creation of Treasury bond futures is that there were two oil crises in the United States in the 1970s, which led to the overall fluctuation of inflation in the United States and the fluctuation of interest rates was relatively large. Investors who hold US Treasury bonds for a long time have a strong investment demand for bond position management, so the Chicago Board of Trade began to plan to issue Treasury bonds futures. In January 1976, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange launched the 90-day Treasury bill futures contract, which was the first Treasury bond futures contract in the history of the United States, marking the official establishment of the Treasury bond futures market.

Domestically, the first pilot trading of Treasury bond futures began on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 1992, and the simulation trading pilot was restarted in 2012. On September 6, 2013, the five-year Treasury bond futures contract TF1312 was officially listed and traded on the China Financial Futures Exchange, marking the official establishment of the domestic Treasury bond futures market.

Part.1

The development history of domestic and overseas Treasury bond futures

The earliest Treasury bond futures in the overseas market is the American market, which was originally set up to smooth the fluctuations of assets holding the position of Treasury bonds, reduce interest rate risk, and maintain the stability of the financial system. In the 1970s, with the dissolution of the Bretton Woods system, the end of the gold standard era and the impact of the energy crisis, the United States fell into economic stagflation. In order to promote the repair of the US economy, the US government liberalized the control of interest rates, resulting in increasing fluctuations in market interest rates. Wide fluctuations in interest rates made it difficult for investors holding long-term fixed interest rate bonds in the market, thus increasing the market’s demand for avoiding interest rate risks. Then came Treasury bond futures, an interest rate risk management tool. In January 1976, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange introduced short-term interest rate futures varieties of 90-day Treasury bill futures. In May 1982, the Chicago Exchange continued to introduce 10-year Treasury bond futures, long-term Treasury bond futures and other varieties. With the increase in the scale of US Treasury bonds, the overall turnover of the Treasury bond futures market has also increased, and the average daily turnover of US Treasury bond futures by the end of 2022 is about 120 billion US dollars. On the basis of the US Treasury bond futures system, other countries have also begun to develop their own national Treasury bond futures. At present, the global Treasury bond futures have formed a relatively complete futures contract system with different maturities.

In the domestic market, the government bond futures restarted the simulation trading pilot in 2012, and the five-year government bond futures contract was officially listed on the China Financial Futures Exchange on September 6, 2013. This was followed by the launch of the 10-year Treasury futures contract in 2015, the two-year Treasury futures contract in 2018, and the 30-year Treasury futures contract on April 21 this year. From the current domestic bond futures market, our country has formed a relatively perfect bond futures contract system covering long, medium and short term. At present, the average daily turnover of China’s national debt futures market is about 400 billion yuan.

Part.2

The role of Treasury bond futures

1. Reduce the risk of interest rate fluctuations

As a derivative of cash bonds, the price trend of bond futures is highly positively correlated with the price trend of cash bonds. Institutional investors such as commercial banks and insurance companies can hedge their cash bond positions by using the bond futures, thus effectively avoiding the potential risks caused by sharp fluctuations in interest rates.

2. Offer price discovery

As a kind of futures derivatives, national debt futures itself has the price discovery function of futures varieties. Through the national debt futures market, the expectation of interest rate trend can be reflected in a timely manner, helping to realize the construction of bond yield curve under the macro-policy regulation.

3. Help bond issuance

As an interest rate risk management tool, Treasury bond futures can provide risk management during the transaction for underwriters, investors and other participants in the primary market of Treasury bonds, improve the willingness of participants to participate, and thus help the better issuance of national bonds.

4. Implement asset allocation

As a kind of bond derivatives, Treasury bond futures have a high degree of positive correlation with cash bonds, and can be used as another investment way to allocate bond assets. In addition, because the national debt futures itself has a certain leverage and the transaction fee is relatively low, more flexible investment strategy management can be achieved.

Part.3

The investor structure of Treasury bond futures

At present, investors in the national debt futures market can be divided into individual investors and institutional investors, of which institutional investors account for 91% of the position, 75% of the turnover, is the main group participating in the national debt futures market.

1. Individual investors

Because investment in the Treasury bond futures market requires a certain degree of professionalism and understanding of macro policies, individual investors rarely participate in Treasury bond futures. In addition, the authority access of national debt futures also has high requirements on the asset level and trading experience of individual investors. Individual investors must ensure that the available fund balance of the account is not less than 500,000 yuan for 5 consecutive trading days before applying for an account opening. At the same time, they must have a total of 10 trading days, more than 20 financial futures simulation trading records or more than 10 futures trading records in the last three years, and they must also test the basic knowledge of financial futures. The high threshold also makes participation by individual investors relatively limited.

2. Institutional investors

At present, the institutional investors of national debt futures include commercial banks, insurance asset management, public funds, private funds, securities asset management and so on. With the further liberalization of access to the national debt futures market, the composition of institutional investors in national debt futures began to change, from the original commercial banks and fund companies to gradually diversify. As an important institutional investor in the medium and long term allocation of national debt, insurance institutions are also entering the national debt futures market in batches, and insurance capital is becoming a new increment in the national debt futures market. Through the Treasury bond futures market, insurance companies can more effectively manage the interest rate risk of holding cash bonds, optimize the portfolio of insurance companies in the bond sector, and improve the willingness of insurance companies to further participate in the Treasury bond market. In addition, the participation of private funds has also been increasing, further enhancing the degree of institutionalization of the Treasury bond futures market. In addition, private funds have also begun to use interest rate derivatives such as national debt futures to allocate bond assets, and with the advantage of low transaction cost and good liquidity of national debt futures, they have built more abundant bond portfolio strategies and bond and other major asset portfolio strategies.

Part.4

Brief summary

With the gradual release of access to the national debt futures market, more investors will participate in the national debt futures market, which will provide more incremental funds for the national debt futures market and enhance the liquidity of the national debt market. It is believed that with the gradual expansion of the scale of cash bonds and the further improvement of the depth of market trading, Treasury bond futures will usher in more new opportunities for development.

As the Llama3-V open source model led by Stanford University AI team, it was quickly confirmed that the shell copied the domestic Tsinghua and wall intelligence open source model “Little steel gun” MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5, Beijing time on June 4 1:27, The two authors, Siddharth Sharma and Aksh Garg, formally apologized to the MiniCPM team on the social platform X for the behavior and said that the Llama3-V model would be taken down.

In the view of Liu Zhiyuan, chief scientist of Wall-facing Intelligence and associate professor of Tsinghua University, the main goal of industry practitioners in 2006 is still to publish a paper at a top international conference. Although this time reveals the high level of AI research and development in China in a regrettable way, it also shows that the large-scale model products of Chinese startups have begun to receive widespread international attention and recognition.

The plagiarism was quickly proven

The timeline shows that the incident began as early as May 29, when an AI team from Stanford University began to advertise on the network that $500 can train a SOTA (the best state of the latest technology) multimodal model.

The authors claim that Llama3-V is more powerful than GPT-4V, Gemini Ultra, and Claude Opus. The team members are undergraduates from Stanford University, who have published several papers in the field of machine learning, and their internship experience includes AWS, SpaceX, and so on. Due to the bright background, the Llama3-V project quickly rushed to the front page of HuggingFace (a developer community and platform) and aroused the attention of the developer community.

A user on social platforms X and HuggingFace questioned whether the Llama3-V is a shell of MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5, an open source end-to-end multimodal model for wall-facing intelligence, which was released on May 21, 2024.

The Llama-3V team responded at the time that they only used the MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5 tokenizer (a word segmentation device, an important component in natural language processing) and started the work before the MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5 was released. However, the team did not explain how the detailed tokenizer was obtained before the release of MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5.

Subsequently, there were more and more voices about the plagiarism of the above-mentioned AI team. For example, the model structure and configuration file of Llama3-V are exactly the same as MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5, with some reformatting and renaming of some variables. Llama3-V also has the same word segmentation as MiniCPM-Llama3V 2.5, including the special symbols newly defined by MiniCPM-Llama3-V 2.5.

The HuggingFace page shows that the author of the original Llama3-V directly imported the code for the wall-facing intelligent MiniCPM-V when uploading the code, and then changed the name to Llama3-V. But Mustafa Aljadery, one of the authors, does not consider the act plagiarism. He posted that there was a bug in Llama3-V reasoning, and they just used the configuration of MiniCPM-V to solve the bug, not plagiarism. “The architecture is based on comprehensive research, how can you say it’s MiniCPM? The visual part of the MiniCPM code also looks like it was used from Idefics.”

In the view of Li Dahai, CEO of Wall-facing intelligence, another evidence is that Llama3-V also uses the newly set Tsinghua Jane (a batch of Warring States bamboo slips collected by Tsinghua University in July 2008) recognition ability, and the cases presented are exactly the same as MiniCPM, and this training data has not been fully disclosed. More subtly, the two models are highly similar in both correct and incorrect performance after Gaussian perturbation validation, a method used to verify the similarity of models.

In the latest development, two authors from Stanford’s Llama3-V team issued a formal apology to the wall-facing MiniCPM team on a social platform. Aksha Garg said: “First of all, we would like to apologize to the original authors of MiniCPM. I, Sundhas Sharma, and Mustafa released the Llama3-V together. Mustafa wrote the code for the project, but could not be contacted since Wednesday. Sundhas Sharma and I were mainly responsible for helping Mustafa promote the model. The two of us looked at the latest papers to verify the novelty of this work, but were not informed or aware of any previous work from OpenBMB, a large-scale pre-trained language model library and related tools supported by the Tsinghua team. We apologize to the authors and are disappointed that we did not make an effort to verify the originality of this work. We take full responsibility for what happened and have removed the Llama3-V to apologize again.”

Big model era China quickly catch up

For the plagiarism farce, Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab director Christopher David Manning posted a condemnation and praised the Chinese open source model MiniCPM.

“We deeply regret this incident,” Li said. On the one hand, this is also a way to be recognized by the international team, and on the other hand, we call on everyone to build an open, cooperative and trusting community environment.”

At present, the global competition pattern of large models shows the characteristics of diversification. The United States takes the lead in the number and technical level of large models, including natural language processing, computer vision, speech recognition fields, as well as AI chips, cloud computing infrastructure and so on. However, China’s large model has advantages in application scenarios, algorithm optimization, data resources and so on.

According to IT Orange data, at present, there are 102 unicorn companies in the field of artificial intelligence in China, of which 10 are new unicorns in 2023, and 4 are related to AIGC and large models, accounting for nearly half, including wisdom spectrum AI, Baichuan intelligence, zero and one things, Minimax name Dream.

Talking about the gap between China and the United States in the field of large models, Chairman and CEO Kaifu Lee said that a year ago, China’s large model and OpenAI, Google to start large model research and development compared to the time, there is a gap of 7 to 10 years; But today, the gap between China and the US is narrowing and is now about six months.

Liu Zhiyuan was plagiarised for this time to recall the past ten years, the scientific research experience of the “change of the star” : in 2006, Liu Zhiyuan read a PhD, the main goal of the computer, artificial intelligence industry practitioners is to issue a paper at the top international conference; In 2014, Liu Zhiyuan began to work as a teacher. At that time, only by obtaining important results such as the best papers from internationally renowned conferences could he have the opportunity to be on the news homepage of the department. In 2018, the language representation model BERT was published, and the research team saw its revolutionary significance, and made a knowledge enhancement pre-training model ERNIE, published in the ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics) 2019 annual conference, such results at that time have been considered to stand on the international frontier; In 2020, OpenAI released 170 + billion parameter GPT-3, practitioners are clearly aware of the gap with the international top results, know shame and then brave began to explore the “big model”; At the end of 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which made the public really feel the gap between domestic and foreign in the field of AI, especially after the release of international open source models such as Llama in 2023, there began to be a saying that “foreign open source and domestic self-research”.

Today in 2024, Liu Zhiyuan said that industry practitioners should also see that domestic large model teams such as ZhipU – Tsinghua GLM, Ali Qwen, DeepSeek and Meibi – Tsinghua OpenBMB are receiving wide attention and recognition internationally through continuous open source sharing. This incident also reflects the international attention paid to domestic innovation achievements.

In addition to single mode, in April this year, Professor Zhu Jun, vice dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Tsinghua University, co-founder and chief scientist of Shengdu Technology, on behalf of Tsinghua University and Shengdu Technology, released China’s first video large model Vidu, which is regarded as the Chinese version of Sora (multi-mode large model released by OpenAI).

Zhou Zhifeng, partner of Qiming Venture Capital, said that today’s large model has gradually moved from the original pure language mode to the exploration of multi-modes. A lot of work has been cited by the OpenAI and Stable Diffusion teams. Tang Jiayu, CEO of Sheng Number Technology, believes that the research of multi-modal large models is still in its infancy, and the technology maturity is not high. This is different from the hot language model, and foreign countries have been ahead of an era. Therefore, compared with the “volume” on the language model, Tang Jiayu believes that multi-modal is an important opportunity for domestic teams to seize the large model track.

Lin Yonghua, vice president and chief engineer of Beijing Zhiyuan Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, holds a more rigorous attitude, she told the first financial reporter that China’s corner overtaking in the multi-modal field is a certain possibility, but the more critical thing is to see the successful elements of the multi-modal model – still computing power, algorithms and data. At the current algorithm level, the difference between the Chinese and American teams is not so big, and the computing power will not cause the biggest problem, and the industry still has ways to solve the computing power problem. However, Lin Yonghua believes that the current data problem is the biggest resistance, even if the wisdom source has been doing AI training data expansion, but to obtain massive high-quality data, it is still very difficult.