The open-source model of the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek breaks the technological hegemony of the United States, setting another example of the U.S. vain efforts to suppress the technological advancement of China, said a Chinese professor.
Shen Yi, professor of international politics of Fudan University, made the remarks in an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN) in Shanghai. He said DeepSeek is a disturbing concern to some U.S. tech companies, who intend to make financial profits from AI technologies.
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company founded in 2023. In January 2025, the company released its latest model, DeepSeek-R1, which has attracted significant attention for its advanced reasoning capabilities. The model is said to have achieved performance comparable to leading AI systems, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, but at a fraction of the development cost.
The launch of DeepSeek-R1 has sent shockwaves through the technology industry, causing a notable decline in the stock prices of major tech companies in the U.S., including Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia.
"The reaction to DeepSeek now clearly tells all of us what will come up when the three things, namely Silicon Valley, technology, and the U.S. hegemony, are put together," said Shen.
The Chinese tech startup also attracted attention from U.S. authorities, who have voiced baseless concerns over using Chinese technologies and have been making measures to suppress the technological development of China.
The U.S. Navy has just banned the use of the AI model developed by DeepSeek , citing "security and ethical concerns." Others have also voiced concerns over the model's data and privacy management practices.
"Science and technology are always related to politics. We say that science has no borders, but that is only a beautiful and an idealistic state or a goal we pursue. This is the first point. The second point, science and technology are always the forefront of strategic competitions and rivalry among major powers. Beginning in 1949, in the process of the founding and development of the People's Republic of China, the United States has always tried to strangle us regarding our scientific and technological development. Our science and technology have grown under the U.S. suppression. This is the second the point. The third point, since the beginning of the reform and opening up, there was a period when we had a rather beautiful illusion, assuming that should China follow the game rules, we could cooperate with all parties. For a period of time, everyone got along superficially, but now, the Americans have panicked," said Shen.
Shen said that the suppression from the U.S. will yield no results, because China has demonstrated its capacity to independently develop advanced sci-tech, which is set to break the hegemony of the U.S. and benefit the rest of the world.
"You will find that all the U.S suppressions on China's high sci-tech have yielded the opposite effect, which have made China a very rare country in the world with non-American whole technology chain, a country of high production capacity with a complete non-American supply chain. We are able to produce cheaper and more reliable chips. Now we are gradually making breakthroughs and maturing in advanced process, and we have largely already matured and completed in mature technologies," said Shen.
DeepSeek breaks U.S. technological hegemony: scholar
