A decade ago, Xi Jinping asked whether China could master artificial intelligence — and the answer has reshaped not only an economy but a civilization's relationship with power. What began as a question of national competitiveness has become a comprehensive reordering: factories optimized, markets transformed, and citizens monitored through the same technological infrastructure. As China and the United States each recognize what dominance in AI truly means, the rivalry between them has ceased to be merely commercial and become something closer to a contest over who writes the rules of the comi