> Your 'cope' accusation has no place here

I will rephrase my statement and continue to stand by it: "Denying the volume of original AI research being done by China - a falsifiable metric - betrays some level of cope."

You seem to agree on the fact that China has surpassed the US. As for quality, I'll say expertise is a result of execution. At some point in time during off-shoring, the US had qualitatively better machinists that China, despite manufacturing volumes. That is no longer the case today - as they say, cream floats to the top, and that holds true for a pot or an industrial-sized vat.