Two Generations Was All It Took

Yesterday I watched the footage of Trump's state visit to China, and honestly it hit me. Red carpet, military band, state dinner. Musk, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook all came along, even Defense Secretary Hegseth. First time a US president visited China in nearly nine years.

Think about who this is. The president of the most powerful country on earth, bringing some of the biggest names in tech, sitting down to talk. Not coming to lecture. Coming to negotiate.

Everyone knows Trump's style. With countries he considers weaker, he doesn't even bother pretending — might makes right. These past few years, the way many world leaders have looked standing next to him has been, frankly, painful to watch. Some of it bordered on comical.

But watch him in China. Completely different person. Polite, restrained, saying nice things.

Why? Because you're strong enough. Weak countries in today's world have no dignity to speak of.

Stand first

When the People's Republic was founded in 1949, how bad was it? A century of getting beaten from every direction. Foreign powers, the Japanese, civil war. The country had nothing left.

But the first priority wasn't getting rich. It was making sure nobody could beat you again.

The Korean War broke out in 1950. When Chinese volunteers crossed the Yalu River, the country's per capita GDP was a few dozen dollars. The Americans had tanks, artillery, fighter jets. China didn't even have an air force, and logistics were basically nonexistent. Under those conditions, over a million troops went in, fighting on guts and willingness to die, and pushed the front line back to a ceasefire.

Over a hundred thousand never came home.

Then came the Two Bombs, One Satellite program.

First atomic bomb in 1964. Hydrogen bomb test in 1967, just 32 months from fission to fusion, the fastest of any nuclear state. "Dongfanghong-1" satellite launched in 1970. China became the fifth country to independently put a satellite in orbit.

Of the 23 scientists honored for this, 10 had studied in America, 6 in Britain, others in France, Germany, the Soviet Union. They finished their studies abroad and came back. Back to a country that had nothing. In the chaos of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, they built world-class strategic technology.

What made it extraordinary? The window.

Try building nuclear weapons today. You can't. The treaties killed that. The window closed. Those scientists, working with raw brilliance and pure stubbornness on barren ground, grabbed it while it was still open.

From poor to prosperous

The first thirty years solved the "can't be beaten" problem. Next: "can't eat."

Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour in 1992. Reform and opening up had nearly stalled, conservative forces were gaining ground. An 87-year-old man, instead of arguing with bureaucrats in Beijing, went straight to Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai and said one line: "Development is the only hard truth."

GDP growth went from 3.9% in 1990 to 14.3% in 1992. That same year, the 14th Party Congress formalized the "socialist market economy."

I was born right at that inflection point. For as long as I can remember, China was growing. My generation got lucky — never went hungry, never lived through a war.

There's a concept in economics called the middle income trap. The World Bank studied it: out of 101 middle-income economies since 1960, only 13 made it to high income. South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore. That's the short list.

Now it's China's turn.

Per capita GNI in 2024 was roughly $13,500. The World Bank's high-income line is$14,005, a 4% gap. Probably cleared within a year or two. A 1.4-billion-person economy crossing that line. Never happened before.

Why do some countries get stuck? It's not a shortage of smart people. Some countries have plenty of brilliant minds. But the talent leaves and doesn't come back. Society itself is too fractured, no stable foundation to channel all that energy into something coherent. Having a big population and having a deep talent pool are different things. Look at India and Brazil.

The AI parallel

Back to windows of opportunity. AI works the same way.

I wrote a piece before about how the AI industry is already in wartime. Look at global AI today. The only two players that actually compete at the frontier model level are the US and China.

Stanford's 2026 AI Index has some interesting numbers. The top US model leads the top Chinese model by just 2.7%. DeepMind's CEO Hassabis himself said the gap is only "a few months."

But there's another number that's even more interesting: US private AI investment totaled $285.9 billion. China's was$12.4 billion. A 23x spending gap producing less than a 3-point performance gap. So who's more efficient?

Europe has Mistral, valued at €11.7 billion and growing. But on the frontier model leaderboards, the gap between Mistral and the US-China top tier is clear. Everywhere else isn't even in the conversation.

Why can only the US and China compete?

I think the answer is the same as why those scientists pulled off Two Bombs, One Satellite seventy-seven years ago. Stable environment, sustained investment in education, deep enough talent base, and making the right calls when the window was open. China now holds close to 70% of global AI patents, and leads in research output and industrial robot deployment.

Foundation, environment, timing. Take away any one and it falls apart. Same logic as seventy years ago.

None of this was guaranteed

From 1949 to 2026. Seventy-seven years. About two generations.

Zoom in a bit. My parents' generation, thirty, forty years ago, still going hungry. One generation before that, Li Hongzhang signing the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Sino-Japanese War, ceding Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula. Then the Boxer Protocol after the Eight-Nation Alliance. World War II ended, China was one of the victors, and its territory was still carved up at will.

Less than a century later, this country stands at the dead center of the world stage, sitting across the table from the most powerful nation on earth as equals.

Flip through history. Britain's rise via the Industrial Revolution took the better part of a century. Germany after unification, decades. Japan from the Meiji Restoration to genuine great-power status, about the same. And all of them started from a much better position than China did.

Watching yesterday's footage, it's worth stopping to think about what it actually took. People back then carrying millet and rifles, owning nothing, trading their lives for the space to survive. Scientists building world-class technology from absolutely nothing. Then generation after generation of ordinary people grinding it out until we got here. Sitting comfortably, eating whatever we want, drinking whatever we want, living with dignity.

None of this fell from the sky.

From standing up, to getting prosperous, to sitting at the center of the world while it falls apart around you. Two generations. That's all it took.

So what about us? What does our generation do next?

References

1. Trump's 2026 State Visit to China — May 13–15, 2026, first US presidential visit to China in nearly nine years; Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Tim Cook, and Defense Secretary Hegseth accompanied
2. Who Was on Trump's Plane to China (PBS) — delegation included multiple tech CEOs and the Secretary of Defense
3. Trump–Xi Beijing Summit Trade Talks (CNBC) — both sides reached "generally balanced and positive outcomes"
4. Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour — Jan–Feb 1992, visited Wuhan, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shanghai; GDP growth surged from 3.9% to 14.3%
5. China in the Korean War — 1950–1953, China deployed over 1 million volunteers under extreme material disadvantage
6. Two Bombs, One Satellite — atomic bomb 1964, hydrogen bomb 1967, satellite 1970; 23 honored scientists
7. China's 32 Months from A-Bomb to H-Bomb (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) — the shortest fission-to-fusion timeline of any nuclear state
8. The Middle Income Trap and China (CEPR) — World Bank high-income threshold $14,005; only 13 of 101 middle-income economies since 1960 successfully crossed
9. China's Per Capita GNI Approaching High-Income Threshold (SCMP) — ~$13,500 in 2024, ~4% gap
10. Stanford 2026 AI Index Report — US–China AI performance gap narrowed to 2.7%; China holds ~70% of global AI patents
11. DeepMind CEO: US–China AI Gap Is Only "Months" — Hassabis's assessment of the US–China AI gap
12. US–China AI Investment Gap (Morgan Stanley) — US private AI investment $285.9B vs China$12.4B
13. Treaty of Shimonoseki — signed 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War by Li Hongzhang, ceding Taiwan, Penghu, and the Liaodong Peninsula
14. Boxer Protocol — signed 1901 after the Eight-Nation Alliance; Li Hongzhang was China's signatory and died shortly after