Chinese AI models lag US frontier by average of 7 months since 2023, ranging from 4 to 14 months using Epoch Capabilities Index; no Chinese model surpasses OpenAI's o3 from April 2025.

Chinese AI models have lagged the US frontier by 7 months on average since 2023

Overview We visualize the gap in capabilities between US and Chinese models, using the Epoch Capabilities Index (ECI). Since 2023, the gap has ranged from 4 to 14 months, with a mean gap of 7 months. Analysis To calculate the gap between US and Chinese models, we first find the set of models that had the highest ECI among models from their country upon release. We then drop the first of these models (LLaMA-65B for the US, and Baichuan1-7B for China), since these first models were likely not at t...