China may be exceptionally good at building the machines of the artificial-intelligence age. The harder question is whether its political and economic system can cope with what happens when those machines become genuinely transformative. That distinction matters. The AI contest is no longer simply about which country produces the most capable models. The decisive advantage may belong to the country that can turn those models into higher productivity across millions of businesses, factories and services.

China starts with formidable advantages. It has an enormous manufacturing base, sophisticated supply chains, vast engineering capacity and an extraordinary ability to direct capital towards strategic priorities. Industrial robots, electric vehicles, autonomous systems and humanoid machines are already moving from laboratories into factories and warehouses. Beijing’s “AI Plus” strategy is aimed at extending artificial intelligence into manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare and other sectors. Yet China’s strengths contain a contradiction.

An economy can deploy technology rapidly without necessarily becoming more productive. Companies have to redesign processes, train workers, reorganise data and change management practices before AI produces its........

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