At a supply chain expo in Beijing on June 24, 2026, PwC Global Chair Mohamed Kande gives a tour of the company’s booth to Ren Hongbin, Chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).
CNBC | Evelyn Cheng
Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a snapshot of what I’m seeing and hearing from local businesses.
As more Chinese tech companies set their sights on global users, competition with the U.S. enters a new phase.
The big story
From data centers to artificial intelligence applications, Chinese companies are expanding rapidly outside their home market, just as American firms race to do the same.
“US tech investors need to keep a very close eye on the growing competition from China tech because as we’ve seen, many Chinese companies first prioritize market share over profit margins,” market strategist Peter Boockvar wrote on June 24.
Launching low-cost AI models with capabilities that rival American-made ones was only the first step.
Next is industrial integration. It’s a sign that price and functionality will increasingly matter as economic competition expands globally — clearly illustrated by events over the past week.
The use of AI in manufacturing is going to create more jobs and opportunities “not only here in China, but also outside of China, where a lot of companies will leverage Chinese technology,” Mohamed Kande, global chairman of PwC, said Wednesday during a panel at the state-organized China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing.
Despite China’s decades-old role as a global manufacturing hub, the supply chain expo itself only launched in 2023 after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call to enhance industrial security.
That same morning, Chinese Premier Li Qiang referenced the expo at the World Economic Forum’s “Summer Davos” event in Dalian to emphasize how innovation can offset global economic headwinds.
He touted 10 billion downloads globally of China’s open-source AI models.
“China will integrate more proactively into the global innovation and industrial chains,” he said, according to an official English translation.
Chinese companies use AI for cross-industry collaboration far more than businesses elsewhere, especially U.S. firms, PwC said in a report published as the supply chain expo kicked off. Kande and PwC declined to comment further.
The U.S. playbook
The U.S. isn’t sitting still.
The State Department last week signed on new Europeans participants for its “Pax Silica” initiative to secure global tech supply chains, while urging countries to rally behind U.S. tech rather than developing competing systems.
Following a two-day Pax Silica summit that wrapped up on Friday in Washington, D.C., the U.S. launched an advanced manufacturing program with Stanford University.
And sharing the stage with PwC’s Kande in Beijing was Boeing China President Landon Loomis, who also serves as a U.S. representative to the APEC Business Advisory Council.
Loomis highlighted APEC’s upcoming “digital week” in Chengdu next month as an “important opportunity” for member economies to discuss AI governance and “technological operability.”
Although the event will take place in China, U.S. tech companies are expected to attend and hold workshops promoting American AI capabilities, a U.S. official previously told CNBC.
Meanwhile, American companies in China navigate a middle road.
Honeywell China used the expo to announce a partnership integrating its manufacturing management system and AI capabilities with ByteDance’s corporate software Lark. With the system, Honeywell clients can increase returns by three to five times, Honeywell China President William Yu claimed during a panel at the expo.
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sent a video message after participating in person last year, while the expo organizers said Apple’s Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan attended for the first time this year. The iPhone maker did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
The next battleground
Efforts by U.S. companies to retain a foothold in China come as Chinese companies push further overseas, particularly in cloud computing infrastructure.
Earlier this month, Alibaba announced its third European data center in France, joining facilities in the U.K. and Germany.
The move “underscores Alibaba’s global cloud ambitions,” said Aras Poon, an analyst at S&P Global Ratings.
“The French site will likely bring data closer to local customers, reducing latency, improving reliability, and positioning Alibaba to serve more complex, time-sensitive workloads,” Poon said.
Alibaba and ByteDance are also investing heavily in data centers in Asia, where Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle are pursuing similar buildouts. By 2030, Asia Pacific could account for roughly 34% of global data center demand, compared with North America’s projected 46% share, McKinsey said in a report last week.
The global AI race is clearly no longer just about who builds the smartest model, but about ecosystems.
Need to know
Morgan Stanley doubles China humanoid robot shipment forecast as commercialization accelerates
The investment bank now expects 50,000 Chinese humanoids to ship this year, up from predictions earlier this year of 28,000 and 14,000. Shenzhen-based Lingyi iTech, which listed in Hong Kong on Friday, told CNBC’s Emily Tan that it’s manufacturing humanoids for both Chinese and American companies.
Tencent tests AI assistant in China’s most popular app as it looks to catch up with rivals
Xiaowei, “a native AI assistant,” is being tested “on a small scale” in Weixin, the Chinese version of WeChat, Tencent said in a statement translated by CNBC.
Second worker dies at BYD’s Hungary factory already under scrutiny for labor practices
The fatality — which follows a death at the site in February — comes after BYD executive vice president Stella Li earlier this month denied allegations of labor abuse at the site. The automaker did not respond to requests for comment on the latest fatality.
U.S. fights with Brazil for China’s giant soybean market
China has bought all 12 million metric tons of American soybeans that it agreed to purchase in the marketing year ending August 2026, and almost all of that has been shipped, Jim Sutter, CEO of the U.S. Soybean Export Council told CNBC. As for the subsequent 25 million metric tons, he said purchases have begun.
Coming up
June 30: China’s official manufacturing PMI for June
July 1: 105th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC)
July 1: China’s new rules on outbound investment take effect
July 1: RatingDog China manufacturing PMI for June
July 3: RatingDog China services PMI for June
July 2 -5: Global Digital Economy Conference in Beijing
