People's Sharp Commentary: Has the "Power Narrative" been Overturned? Don't Be Led Astray by One-Sided Thinking

Source: People’s Daily Commentary; Author: As the saying goes

Recently, a data center cost breakdown chart has sparked widespread discussion. The chart analyzes the cost composition of a 1GW data center, in which electricity costs account for 5%. This is, in principle, a professional analysis in a professional field. However, once it was posted online, people misinterpreted and misunderstood it—claiming that electricity costs have a “limited impact on total costs,” and from that concluding that China’s “beautiful AI narrative” has been debunked.

In AI development, power is the foundation infrastructure. If power supply is insufficient or unreliable, problems will inevitably arise. Its importance cannot be measured only by cost share, nor can it be used to deny China’s advantages in the AI track. As a netizen remarked: if we assess importance only by weight percentage, then would blood be important to the human body by only about 7%? Obviously not.

The more the reasoning goes, the clearer the truth becomes. This misreading reflects the more worth reflecting on the one-sided way of thinking. When you view things without a full, dialectical perspective and fall into the bias of “seeing only the trees and not the forest,” then seize on one point, keep magnifying it, attach viewpoint labels, and form polarized dissemination—this will only mislead public opinion.

Judging from how to grasp development trends, China is an ultra-large-scale country, and economic and social development is even more a complex system. Only by looking at development realities with a comprehensive, dialectical, and long-term perspective can we capture China’s overall advantages.

Take AI development as an example. We praise the power advantage, and we never deny the gap in GPUs, and we certainly won’t overlook comprehensive advantages such as talent, the market, and real-world deployment scenarios. One comparison can clearly illustrate the point: not long ago, the U.S. OpenAI shut down its video generation tool Sora. This star product burns $5 billion a year but only earns back $2.1 million; by contrast, after Chinese companies released the video generation tool Seedance2.0, it was welcomed and found application and deployment in scenarios such as short dramas and film special effects. One was forced to shut down, the other grew in the wind—China’s advantages as an ultra-large market and in scenario deployment have been rendered concrete.

From leading the world in high-speed rail to catching up and even taking the lead in biopharmaceuticals, across every field China has demonstrated systematic, comprehensive advantages. What’s needed is systematic cognition and a comprehensive grasp. Focusing on one point and neglecting the rest will only turn into the “blind men feeling an elephant” situation.

Looking at it from escaping thinking traps, one-sided ways of thinking typically lead to cognitive mistakes. Only by continuously correcting them can we prevent them from taking the reins and manufacturing anxiety in the arena of public opinion.

In recent years, erroneous views such as the “China collapse theory” and “economic peak theory” have appeared from time to time, and behind them there is always a one-sided way of thinking at work. For example, by magnifying the impact of tariffs and believing that tariffs will “force” manufacturing out of China. The truth is that this wrong argument ignores the comprehensive advantages of China’s manufacturing industry—such as scale economies, complete industrial chains, hub effects, and innovation potential. As a result, China’s manufacturing not only weathered the tariff shocks; its global share has remained firmly in first place, and it continues to iterate and upgrade, making its competitive advantages even more evident worldwide.

Take another example: by magnifying the impact of technological blockade, claiming that the U.S.’s “decoupling and cutting chains” and “a high wall in a small courtyard” will curb China’s technological innovation. The truth is that this erroneous argument ignores China’s technology has rich talent reserves, prior R&D accumulation, and coordinated cooperation across industry, academia, and research. As a result, China’s technological innovation has not been choked off—instead, in recent years it has shown a blowout trend, and it has also moved into the top ten in the world rankings of the national innovation index.

Reality is complex enough, and China is big enough. When you trim reality with a single track and one-sided thinking, it’s easy to believe blindly and get swept up by rumors as if they were facts. Only by sticking to a comprehensive and dialectical way of thinking—neither getting stuck in a corner when problems arise and ignoring the overall situation, nor being blindly overconfident when you see achievements and ignoring shortfalls—can we fully grasp the realities of China’s development, stay rational and composed at all times, and get through storms and winds to win the long run.

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Editor: Zhang Hengxing