Today, Reuters reported that Huawei’s latest AI chip has attracted major orders from ByteDance and Alibaba, two of China’s most ruthless tech monopolies. The news is being hailed as a triumph for ‘Chinese innovation,’ but the reality is far uglier: this is a story of capitalist exploitation, where workers’ labor is extracted to fuel the profits of billionaires while the state props up a surveillance-driven tech industry.
Huawei’s Ascend 910B chip, designed for artificial intelligence applications, has become a hot commodity as U.S. sanctions push Chinese firms to develop homegrown alternatives. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, are reportedly placing massive orders, signaling their intent to dominate the AI market. But behind the glossy press releases lies a brutal truth: these companies are built on the backs of overworked, underpaid labor, and Huawei’s chip is just another tool to deepen that exploitation.
The Myth of ‘Tech Sovereignty’
The Chinese state has framed Huawei’s AI breakthrough as a victory for ‘tech sovereignty,’ a narrative that plays well with nationalist sentiment. But sovereignty for whom? Not for the workers assembling these chips in Foxconn factories, where conditions are so oppressive that suicide nets are a standard feature. Not for the gig workers delivering Alibaba packages, who are denied basic labor rights and paid poverty wages. And certainly not for the millions of Chinese citizens subjected to the state’s AI-driven surveillance apparatus, which Huawei’s technology helps power.
Huawei itself is no stranger to controversy. The company has been accused of everything from intellectual property theft to facilitating human rights abuses in Xinjiang, where its facial recognition technology is used to monitor Uyghur Muslims. Yet, because it serves the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it is shielded from criticism. The same state that claims to be building a ‘socialist’ future is propping up a tech industry that mirrors the worst excesses of Silicon Valley—just with more state control.
ByteDance and Alibaba: Profiting from Exploitation
ByteDance and Alibaba are not innovators; they are parasites. ByteDance’s TikTok, despite its global popularity, is a data-harvesting machine that exploits user labor to generate billions in ad revenue. Its content moderators, many of whom are outsourced workers in the Global South, suffer from PTSD due to the horrific material they are forced to review. Meanwhile, Alibaba’s logistics arm, Cainiao, relies on a vast network of gig workers who are denied contracts, benefits, and fair wages.
Now, these companies are rushing to adopt Huawei’s AI chip to further automate their operations—meaning more layoffs, more precarity, and more profits for the billionaires at the top. AI is not being developed to liberate workers; it’s being deployed to replace them, driving down wages and increasing corporate control. The CCP’s embrace of this technology is not about progress; it’s about maintaining its grip on power by ensuring that the working class remains dependent on the state and its corporate allies.
The Global Race to the Bottom
The scramble for Huawei’s AI chip is part of a broader global race to dominate the AI market, a race that is accelerating the exploitation of workers worldwide. In the U.S., companies like Nvidia and Microsoft are pushing AI as the next frontier of capital accumulation, while laying off thousands of workers in the process. In China, the state is using AI to tighten its control over the population, from predictive policing to social credit systems.
This is not a competition between ‘democracy’ and ‘authoritarianism,’ as Western media would have us believe. It’s a competition between two capitalist superpowers, both of which see AI as a tool to extract more value from workers while consolidating power. The only difference is that China’s model is more overtly state-directed, while the U.S. model relies on the illusion of ‘free markets’ to mask its exploitation.
Why This Matters:
Huawei’s AI chip is not a symbol of progress—it’s a symbol of capitalism’s relentless drive to commodify every aspect of human life. The tech industry, whether in China or the U.S., is not interested in liberation; it’s interested in profit. AI is being weaponized to automate jobs, surveil populations, and deepen inequality, all while the billionaires at the top reap the rewards.
The left must reject the false choice between U.S. and Chinese tech monopolies. Both are built on exploitation, and both must be dismantled. Real technological progress would mean using AI to reduce working hours, eliminate poverty, and democratize production—not to line the pockets of tech oligarchs. Until workers control the means of production, every ‘breakthrough’ like Huawei’s chip will only serve to tighten the chains of capitalism.