This week, the Chinese government announced a 20-year, trillion RMB ($140B) early-stage fund (to be "mobilized" from local government and private investors) to invest in frontier technologies like AI, quantum computing, and hydrogen energy storage.

The 20-year time horizon stands out — typical US funds run for 10 years, or 12 with extensions, but private Chinese funds are often much shorter, with 3-8 being the typical range. Making this work requires a fundamental shift in how the ecosystem approaches early-stage deep tech investing. This is just one of many moves China is making to reshape its capital sources to better support tech development, but progress has been slow, uneven, and painful for many involved. Financial decoupling could actually help — so long as Chinese companies rely on U.S. capital markets for liquidity, it’s tough to imagine them operating under entirely different venture rules. That’s clearly changing, but the question is how quickly, and what happens in the meantime.