Will China or the US lead the way in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? To answer this question, leading thinkers and policymakers in both countries draw lessons from past technology-driven power transitions that centre the moment of innovation – the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats. In this book, Jeffrey Ding offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers. Rather than focusing on which state first introduced major innovations, he investigates why some states were more successful than others at adapting and embracing general-purpose technologies at scale. Drawing on historical case studies of past industrial revolutions as well as statistical analysis, Ding develops a theory that emphasizes institutional adaptations oriented around diffusing technological advances throughout the entire economy. Applying GPT diffusion theory to analyze US–China competition in AI, this book derives novel insights about how today’s technological breakthroughs will affect the US–China power balance, as well as the optimal strategies for the US and China to pursue.

Jeffrey Ding is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. His book Technology and the Rise of Great Powers, published with Princeton University Press, investigates how past technological revolutions influenced the rise and fall of great powers, with implications for US–China competition in emerging technologies like AI. Ding’s research has been published in European Journal of International Relations, Foreign Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, and Security Studies. He received his DPhil in 2021 from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and earned his BA in 2016 at the University of Iowa.