Source: Fortune
The comparison is instructive but incomplete: China's WTO entry drove manufacturing relocations and supply chain upheaval, while AI's disruption is simultaneously broader (affecting white-collar work, creative industries, knowledge work) and more concentrated (controlled by a handful of U.S. tech companies rather than distributed across a nation-state). The parallel worth tracking is the speed of policy response—China's integration took a decade to fully reshape labor markets, whereas AI's impact on wages, job displacement, and capital allocation is compressing that timeline into months, giving governments and corporations far less time to adapt.