US-China In A Defining Race For Quantum Supremacy

2025-07-17 05:02:31

(MENAFN- Asia Times) Quantum computing is becoming the defining battleground of the 21st-century technological rivalry between the United States and China.

The stakes go beyond computational speed: at issue is who will build the technological infrastructure of the future, from intelligent supply chains and personalized medicine to quantum-secure communication and AI-enhanced robotics.

Quantum computing is not only a hardware battle; it is a battle for the infrastructure of the 21st century.

Fig. 1. Quantum computing combines analog and digital paradigms.

Quantum computing combines the principles of computing with those of quantum mechanics. In 1981, American quantum physicist Richard Feynman noted that classical computers, whether analog or digital, struggle to simulate quantum phenomena efficiently.

He argued that only a quantum system could simulate another quantum system by using the peculiar behaviors of subatomic particles as computational resources. Feynman asked:“Could we build a computer that works like the universe itself?”

That vision began to take concrete form in 1985, when British physicist David Deutsch published a landmark paper titled“Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing Principle, and the Universal Quantum Computer.”

Deutsch proposed a theoretical framework for a universal quantum computer, introducing the concept of quantum gates and circuits, the building blocks of quantum algorithms. Deutsch laid the foundational architecture for the entire field of quantum computing.

At the core of quantum computers is the qubit, or quantum bit. Unlike regular bits in digital (binary) computers, which are either 0 or 1, a qubit can be both 0 and 1 at the same time, thanks to a special quantum mechanical property called superposition.

This enables quantum computers to solve specific problems, such as modeling molecules, optimizing systems, or securing data, significantly faster than conventional computers. Qubits can be created in various ways, such as utilizing the spin of tiny particles like electrons or the properties of light, depending on the specific task.

A qubit is typically visualized as a sphere, known as the Bloch sphere, which can be thought of as a 3D compass. The discrete structure (the polarities 0 and 1) provides the computational scaffolding: gates, circuits, and algorithms.

Whether they are 0 or 1 may depend on context. Computational processes within the Bloch sphere are analog. Quantum algorithms rely on this interplay to achieve exponential speedups in solving specific problems.

Fig. 2. The“fixed” classical binary bit and the“quantum” bits of the qubit. Analog calculations are executed within the so-called Bloch sphere.

The first experimental quantum computers arrived in the late 1990s. In 1998, researchers at Oxford and MIT constructed a basic two-qubit quantum computer utilizing nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques.

Though limited in function, it served as a proof of concept. From the 2000s onward, quantum computing became a global technological race, involving academia, governments, tech giants, and startups.

Quantum supremacy

In 2006, China entered the quantum computing race when the government announced its 2020 Science and Technology Roadmap, identifying“quantum control” as a key area of basic research.

In 2021, its 14th Five-Year Plan, quantum information ranked second among cutting-edge science and technology fields, just behind artificial intelligence (AI). In March of this year, China launched a 1 trillion yuan (~US$138 billion) national venture fund, explicitly targeting quantum computing and related technologies.

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