China’s Approach to AI in the Global South: Selling the Razor Blades, Not the Razor - ANDREW POLK (Sinica)

 China’s Approach to AI in the Global South: Selling the Razor Blades, Not the Razor
ANDREW POLK
Sinica, SEP 12, 2026

Everyone keeps calling the US-China AI competition a race.

But Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project, says that framing is wrong — because a race implies a finish line, and this competition doesn’t have one.
Eric’s view is that Chinese AI companies aren’t necessarily looking to out innovate US closed-weight models.
Instead, the goal for China is to become Android to America’s Apple — 10% of the profit, but 90% of the world’s users.
On this week’s episode of the Trivium China Podcast, Eric discusses China’s approach to building AI offerings in the Global South with host Andrew Polk — but only after the two run through the flurry of travel and diplomacy Xi Jinping is undertaking throughout September.

The two discuss the implications of Xi’s travels, then turn to China’s AI strategy in the region, touching on:

How Xi turned a single stop in Egypt into a four-birds-one-stone diplomatic play, touching on the Iran war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Africa-China relations, and the dynamics around Xinjiang all at once
Why the India-China thaw is real but fragile, and why Xi and Modi’s sideline meeting at the upcoming BRICS summit matters more than anything on the summit’s official agenda
Why China’s AI push into the Global South won’t really be about the models themselves — but about enabling those models with Huawei servers, support contracts, and services sold on top of free, open-weight code
Why the “China is less secure” pitch against Chinese AI companies doesn’t land in a Global South that trusts Washington about as little as it trusts Beijing
Why nobody in the Global South expects much from Xi’s Washington visit, and why the mood in Beijing right now is just as hardened as it is in DC

Transcript of the conversation at this link:
https://www.sinicapodcast.com/p/chinas-approach-to-ai-in-the-global?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2079154&post_id=215438537&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=8ma92&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email