Greatest PRC win of the past year

Do people realise that DeepSeek actually broke in late 2024?

It was DeepSeek V3, not R1. That’s when all the experts were getting shocked, but it took a few months before cascading to the wider public. And then followed up by R1.

I remember reading about DeepSeek last December, it took up like the 0.3% of my reading time that wasn’t completely swallowed up by J-36 and J-XDS.

A cutting edge reasoning AI model, that most in the West can’t even access, cannot capture the public imagination like two large, alien looking aircraft. It’s simply too amorphous and abstract for laypeople. It’s not tangible enough for them (let alone not being accessible for most).

As groundbreaking as DeepSeek is, it still cannot penetrate the copium of people who seriously believe the US has hangar after hangar full of secret alien (extraterrestrial) technology, stashed away for whenever things get kinetic with China.

If “public sentiment” isn’t part of the scoring criteria, only then could I possibly be inclined to pick DeepSeek.

Technically, didn't BYD overtake Tesla in global EVs this year? That was an earthshattering development that puts China on center of the map.

Also, Huawei dethroned Apple as #1 smartphone marketshare in China this year too?

Shaolian said:

I voted for the 6th gen reveals. It was the first time that I felt that China has unquestionably surpassed one of the lynchpins of western hegemony. It also gave some peace of mind that China could continue to develop while keeping western military incursions at bay.

But my gosh, only when you see this list laid out like this, that one can get a feel for the absolute blockbuster year that China had.

Click to expand...

Looks like someone got everything he wanted for Christmas and some more.

I choose the 3/9 parade, not because of the military equipment, but its impact to the general, especially in Asia. Many Asia's leaders present their, showing their citizens that their countries, at least is aligned with China. The parade also shows to many people that there's truly an alliance that can rival the western. The image of trio Kim-Putin-Xi will truly goes down into history

Echoing @ougoah theme of robotics domination. 2025 is a big year for Chinese robotics companies.

As of last week, Chinese robotic vaccum companies now completely dominate the entirety of industry after US-based iRobot (creator of famous Roomba) and sold off to it's Chinese supplier and lender, Picea robotics based in Shenzhen.

Just to give you a picture, before iRobot's bankruptcy, Chinese companies held top 5 global shipments spots, (i.e., Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreame, Xiaomi, and Narwhall) and dominate 70% of marketshare globally, and now if you add in Picea's acquisition of bankrupt iRobot, this domination of probably +80-90% of the market.

I will pick the EUV machine. China has demonstrated the ability to make AI supercluster with DUV chips that can perform Nvidia's Best AI. Imagine a supercluster with 10k EUV chips..

There's still the potential for the CZ-12A re-usable rocket first stage recovery to succeed. Rumor is it's scheduled for Dec 23.

I'm a simple man so i go for the most visual of China's wins, the two 6th gens. It is to me at least still bewildering that China is now ahead of everyone else, the standard setter, the leader in fighter design, including the much vaunted americans. I don't think the americans were left behind like that in the Cold War in fighter design vs the soviets (i'm thinking of the MiG-23/25 and MiG-29/Su-27 that had a measure of superiority vs their american opponents when first introduced, but they were not a generational leap like J-36/50 are).

Also the UADFs and GJ-X are certainly almost up there with the 6th gens too, the UADFs are for all intents and purposes light 6th gen unmanned fighters and GJ-X is a B-21 sized unmanned bomber, no one else has anything remotely similar in capability.

The only one missing from the party as i keep saying is the H-20, hopefully we'll get to see soon the mystery lifted over it, one way or the other.

The many other non-military/political wins such as Deepseek, EUV machine, robotics, EVs or RE domination are of course probably just as if not more groundbreaking, but as the saying goes (or if there isn't one, there should), what use all those monumental advances if you don't have the top tier, dominant, overwhelming military to protect said advances from the dastardly and gealous imperialists?

As a final thought on the military part, let's not forget that all these advances are made within a defence budget that is less that half the GDP percentage compared to US, one can imagine China advances in the military field if they'd have a budget roughly proportional GDP wise to US.

I voted 6th gen jets because it essentially represented the first time since the end of the Ming Dynasty that China took back the lead in military technology.

J-10C shooting down rafales were more significant than the 6th gen reveal. It was literally the first time a 4.5th gen fighter was shot down and proved that China wasn't just making shit up about its capabilities. Also, Americans has A LOT of cope against 6th gen reveals like saying how B-21 was the first 6th gen and how NGAD actually first flew in 2021, if J-10Cs didn't prove itself people would still be calling the 6th gens propaganda pieces.


DeepSeek was great but if it never existed there would have been a qwen moment or something else, China completely dominates open source ai either way.

My top 3 would be:
1) May 7th turkey shoot
2) 6th gen
3) sept 3