Financial Times Columnist Ivy Yang on the US-China Divide, from TikTok to AI
Financial Times columnist Ivy Yang joins us to map the widening divide between the American and Chinese technology ecosystems. From TikTok’s regulatory battles to the parallel AI stacks emerging in Beijing and Shanghai, we look at what “decoupling” actually means in 2026 and which assumptions about Chinese tech are due for an update.
Ivy is one of the sharpest writers working on this beat, and she pushes back productively on a lot of the lazy framings that dominate the discourse — the “copycat” narrative, the assumption that Chinese AI is uniformly state-directed, and the idea that the two economies can ever fully separate.
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About the guest
Ivy Yang
Ivy Yang is a columnist at the Financial Times covering the intersection of technology and geopolitics, with a particular focus on US-China relations. She writes regularly about how the digital economies of both countries are diverging.