题图。

The country has nearly closed its gap to the U.S. in AI bot performance, while continuing to best global competition in number of patents, publications, and rollout of robots, according to the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) 2026 AI Index report released this week.

根据斯坦福大学以人为本人工智能研究所本周发布的2026年人工智能指数报告，中国在人工智能机器人性能方面几乎已追平与美国的差距，同时在专利数量、论文发表和机器人投放规模方面持续领先全球竞争。

The report found a shrinking gap in Arena scores—a metric indicating relative performances of large language models—between the top AI bots in the U.S. and China. In May 2023, the U.S.’s top model, OpenAI’s GPT-4, led with more than 1,300 Arena points compared with China’s fewer than 1,000. By March 2026, that gulf shrank to just 39 Arena points, with the top U.S. model, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6, leading China’s Dola-Seed 2.0 by just 2.7%.

报告发现，中美两国顶尖人工智能机器人在Arena评分上的差距正在缩小——该指标用于衡量大语言模型的相对性能。2023年5月，美国顶级模型OpenAI的GPT-4以超过1300分的Arena评分领先，而中国模型得分不足1000分。至2026年3月，这一差距已缩小至仅39分，美国领先模型Anthropic的Claude Opus 4.6仅比中国的Dola-Seed 2.0高出2.7%。

While the U.S. still beats China in the number of top AI models—50 compared with 30—China has more publication citations than the U.S., accounting for 20.6% of AI citations in 2024 compared with the U.S.’s 12.6%. China also has nearly nine times the volume of industrial robot installations, leading the world with more than 295,000, compared with the U.S.’s 34,200.

尽管美国在顶级人工智能模型数量上仍以50个对30个领先中国，但中国在论文引用量方面已超越美国，2024年其人工智能领域引用量占比达20.6%，而美国为12.6%。中国工业机器人装机量更是美国的近九倍，以超过29.5万台的规模位居世界第一，美国同期安装量为3.42万台。

“For years, the U.S. outpaced all other global regions on AI—in model size, performance, artificial intelligence research, citations, and more,” said Stanford’s summary of the report. “But China emerged as an AI counterweight to the U.S., gradually gaining ground, and this year it appears to have nearly erased any U.S. lead.”

斯坦福大学在报告摘要中指出：“多年来，美国在人工智能领域——无论是模型规模、性能、研究水平还是论文引用等方面——始终领先于全球其他地区。但中国已崛起成为能对美国形成制衡的力量，逐步缩小差距，今年似已近乎抹平了美国的所有领先优势。”

China’s AI surge

中国人工智能的崛起

Despite fewer investment dollars and wider regulatory constraints, China has changed the narrative of its ability to compete against the U.S. in a broader tech war. Spurred by its 2025 “DeepSeek moment,” China has poured funding into AI startups, with IPOs in Hong Kong last quarter reaching a five-year high of $110 billion across 40 new listings.

尽管面临投资资金相对较少、监管约束更为严格等挑战，但中国已经改变了外界对其在更广泛科技战中跟美国竞争能力的看法。受2025年“DeepSeek时刻”的推动，中国持续向人工智能初创企业注入资金，上季度香港（特区）IPO融资额达到1100亿美元，涉及40宗新上市，创下五年新高。

China has also quietly invested in its electricity infrastructure, adding more electricity demand than the entire consumption of Germany every year, David Fishman, a China energy analyst with the Lantau Group, previously said in an interview with Fortune. The country’s reserve margin has never dipped below 80%, Fishman said, essentially giving it twice the necessary capacity to grow AI compute.

能源咨询公司兰陶集团的能源分析师戴维·菲什曼此前接受《财富》杂志采访时表示，中国还在悄然推进电力基础设施建设，每年新增用电需求已超过德国全国的总用电量。菲什曼指出，中国的备用容量率从未低于80%，这意味着其实际拥有支撑人工智能算力增长所需两倍的电力容量。

China’s compute capacity is a far cry from the U.S.’s own ability to sustain and grow AI infrastructure. The American power grid system is crumbling as a result of decades of underinvestment, making it vulnerable to extreme weather and natural disasters, and ultimately creating a bottleneck Goldman Sachs suggests would stymie AI growth in the U.S.

中国的算力能力与美国相比仍有明显差距。但由于数十年的投资不足，美国电网系统正日渐老化，极易受到极端天气和自然灾害的影响，最终形成了高盛所指出的制约美国人工智能发展的瓶颈。

“We’ve actually reduced our exposure to U.S. tech,” Mohit Kumar, Jefferies global macro strategist, told Fortune at the bank’s Asia Forum in Hong Kong last month. “We believe that China is the big winner in this tech war for a number of reasons: valuation, wider adoption of AI, an advantage in power generation.”

“我们实际上已经减少了对美国科技板块的风险敞口，”杰富瑞集团全球宏观策略师莫希特·库马尔上个月在香港（特区）举行的该行亚洲论坛上对《财富》杂志表示。“我们认为中国是这场科技战的大赢家，原因有很多：估值优势、人工智能应用更广泛、以及在发电方面的优势。”

American private investment in AI still far exceeds China’s, reaching $285.9 billion in 2025, more than 23 times China’s $12.4 billion. The U.S. funded 1,953 new AI companies last year, more than 10 times any other country, the Stanford report noted.

美国对人工智能的私人投资仍远超中国，2025年达到2859亿美元，是中国的124亿美元的23倍以上。斯坦福大学的报告指出，美国去年资助了1953家人工智能新公司，数量是其他任何国家的十倍以上。

America’s slowing AI brain gain

美国人工智能“人才流入红利”正在减弱

AI’s momentum swing in China’s favor may be contributing to a slowdown in tech talent entering the U.S. The Stanford report found the number of AI scholars moving to the U.S. dropped 89% since 2017, and that decline is happening precipitously, accelerating 80% in the past year alone. At this juncture, more researchers are still entering the U.S. than leaving it.

人工智能发展势头向中国倾斜，可能正导致进入美国的科技人才增速放缓。斯坦福大学的报告发现，迁往美国的人工智能学者数量自2017年以来下降了89%，并且这一下降趋势正在急剧加速，仅过去一年的加速幅度就达到了80%。在当前阶段，进入美国的研究人员数量仍多于离开的。

“The U.S. is home to the most AI researchers and developers of any country by far,” the report summary said. “But the flow of these experts into the country is dramatically slowing.”

报告摘要指出：“美国目前仍是拥有最多人工智能研究人员和开发人员的国家，遥遥领先。但这些专家流入该国的速度正在急剧放缓。”

Economists have warned a continued loss of expertise would further erode the edge the U.S. has over China in its talent pool. An April 2025 Hoover Institution report conducted in partnership with Stanford HAI found China has built a massive cohort of homegrown talent, with nearly all researchers behind DeepSeek’s five foundational papers educated or trained in China. Though about a quarter of DeekSeek researchers were educated in U.S. institutions, most returned to China, creating a “one-way knowledge transfer” in China’s favor, according to the report.

经济学家警告称，专业人才的持续流失将进一步削弱美国在人才储备方面对中国的优势。斯坦福大学以人为本人工智能研究所与胡佛研究所2025年4月联合发布的报告发现，中国已建立起规模庞大的本土人才队伍——DeepSeek五篇奠基性论文的研究人员几乎全部在中国接受教育或培训。报告指出，尽管约四分之一的DeepSeek研究人员曾在美国院校深造，但多数人选择回国发展，形成了对中国有利的“单向知识流动”格局。

“These talent patterns represent a fundamental challenge to U.S. technological leadership that export controls and computing investments alone cannot address,” the authors wrote.

作者写道：“这些人才流动模式对美国技术领导地位构成了根本性挑战，仅靠出口管制和计算基础设施投资无法解决这一问题。”