China’s Quantum Ambition
A comprehensive investigation into the world’s most coordinated quantum technology program — from China’s industrial policy and talent pipelines to quantum computing hardware, sensing, networking, and the supply chain
-
Underestimating China: Why Beijing Could Win the Quantum Race
Nine investigations. One conclusion. China's structural advantages in quantum technology make it the most dangerous competitor the West has ever underestimated. Over the past several months, I examined every dimension of China's quantum program — the industrial policy that elevated…
Read More » -
China’s Quantum Supply Chain: How Export Controls Are Building What They Sought to Prevent
In June 2023, a Zhejiang University graduate named Chen Jie sat for an interview with a Chinese tech columnist. Chen had founded a cryogenics company called CSSC Pengli in Nanjing thirteen years earlier — a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding…
Read More » -
China’s Quantum Sensing Ecosystem: From Deep-Sea Diamonds to Drone-Mounted Submarine Hunters
In April 2025, a team from the University of Science and Technology of China published what might be the most consequential quantum sensing result of the decade — and almost nobody in the Western security community noticed. They had taken…
Read More » -
China’s Quantum Networking and QKD — World’s Most Ambitious Quantum Communication Program
On September 29, 2017, a video call connected two men separated by 7,600 kilometres. On one end, in Beijing, Bai Chunli, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. On the other, in Vienna, Anton Zeilinger, the physicist who would later…
Read More » -
China’s Quantum Computing Hardware: The Core Capability the West Keeps Misjudging
The published record suggests China trails the US by about a year. The actual gap may be narrower — or it may already be closed. In December 2025, a team at the University of Science and Technology of China quietly…
Read More » -
China’s Quantum Talent Ecosystem: Building a Superpower’s Workforce
In 1996, a 26-year-old physics student from the University of Science and Technology of China arrived in Vienna to begin doctoral work under Anton Zeilinger, one of the world's leading quantum experimentalists. Five years later, he went home. That decision…
Read More » -
China’s Hefei National Laboratory: The Nerve Center of a Quantum Superpower
On April 26, 2016, Xi Jinping walked into USTC's Advanced Technology Research Institute in Hefei and listened to a physicist named Pan Jianwei describe the future of quantum information science. What Xi said next — "Very promising, very important… the…
Read More » -
The $15.3 Billion Number That Everyone Cites and Nobody Can Verify
In October 2023, I was on a call with a European defense ministry official who wanted to discuss quantum threats. Within the first five minutes, he cited it. "China has invested $15.3 billion in quantum technology - nearly double the…
Read More » -
China’s 15th Five-Year Plan Makes Quantum an Industrial Imperative — Not Just a Research Priority
When China's National People's Congress approved the 15th Five-Year Plan on March 12, 2026, it completed a journey that had been building for over a decade. Quantum technology, once buried deep in academic research budgets, emerged at the top of…
Read More » -
The Leapfrog Doctrine: How China Systematically Conquered Every Technology It Targeted
Almost fifteen years ago, I stood on the mezzanine floor of a manufacturing facility in Dongguan, staring into the dark. Literally. Below me, a sprawling production line hummed with the rhythmic, pneumatic hiss of assembly arms and the whine of…
Read More »
