Shooting the Suns - The Ideas Letter
Bequelin situates China’s approach to artificial intelligence within the country’s longer trajectory of treating science as a primary engine of development and state-building. That history has produced in China a…
Shooting the Suns China and the Future of AI A statue of Mao Zedong faces away from the Sichuan Museum of Science and Technology in Chengdu, China. © Alessandro Gandolfi/Panos/Redux Nicholas Bequelin April 30, 2026 | The Ideas Letter 63 I On September 30, 1984, Beijing Municipality opened to the public its first modern subway track, Line 2. For about US$0.035, Beijingers could now conveniently circle the capital along the route of its former imperial walls—a far cry from the impractical Line 1, which had been built by, and for a time reserved for, the People’s Liberation Army as part of Mao-er
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