Let’s not underestimate the next quantum frontrunner — just because the footnotes aren’t always in English.
TL;DR: China is staking a bold claim in the quantum race. The new Zuchongzhi 3.0 chip demonstrates serious technical muscle, potentially matching Google’s best in scale and speed. But as with other recent headlines — including murky RSA-breaking claims — separating real progress from strategic storytelling remains essential. While the science is real, transparency lags. And while the West might still hold an edge in platforms and software, China’s state-backed acceleration is real, fast, and no longer playing catch-up.
In quantum computing, as in diplomacy, the timing of an announcement matters as much as its substance. And lately, China has been impeccable on timing. Just weeks after Google’s 105-qubit Willow chip was publicly dissected, China responded with a quiet but significant salvo of its own: Zuchongzhi 3.0, a superconducting quantum processor built by a team from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).
With 105 qubits and a million-fold speedup over classical simulation, the Chinese chip is no toy. In fact, based on the numbers — fidelity, qubit connectivity, coherence — it holds its own against Willow, arguably the world’s most advanced publicly documented quantum chip to date.
The paper (published in Physical Review Letters) avoids grandiosity. The press coverage, not so much. Headlines across Chinese state media announced a new milestone in quantum advantage, and some even suggested that the Zuchongzhi chip puts China ahead of the US. Nothing less.
The tech is serious — and so is the narrative strategy
The Zuchongzhi 3.0 benchmark was built around random circuit sampling — the same highly specific task Google used in both its 2019 quantum supremacy claim (Sycamore) and its 2024 error-suppression benchmark (Willow). This time, the circuit involved 83 qubits and 32 cycles — and was completed in seconds. USTC researchers estimate that Frontier, the world’s most powerful classical supercomputer, would take 6.4 billion years to do the same.
As a reminder: D-Wave’s recent “supremacy” result — also using random circuit sampling (we covered it last month) — clocked in at a mere one million years of theoretical runtime on Frontier. Still impressive. Just… three orders of magnitude shy.
So has China reached quantum supremacy? In the narrow, experimental sense, yes. It’s a milestone. But it’s not practical quantum computing — not yet.
More importantly, Zuchongzhi’s success isn’t an isolated data point. It’s part of a broader strategy: show parity — or superiority — with Western labs across every major hardware frontier. First came photonics, with Jiuzhang, China’s photonic quantum computer claimed in 2020 to have reached quantum advantage, followed more recently by a new photonic chip demonstrating a world-first on-chip continuous-variable entanglement — a key step toward scalable optical quantum processors. Then came trapped ions, with a 2024 breakthrough paper introducing the world’s largest 2D ion-trap experiment. Now it’s superconducting’s turn, with Zuchongzhi. Next in line: spin qubits and topological qubits — both still early-stage, but the focus of intensifying research.
So why the mixed reactions abroad? On one hand, technical observers have praised the engineering effort. The team published in a respected journal. The processor is scalable, coherent, and architecturally competitive. In short: real science.
On the other hand, some researchers point to a persistent opacity. Unlike their US or European counterparts, Chinese labs rarely open their hardware platforms for external benchmarking or reproducibility testing. Algorithms and methodologies are often described with less granularity, and replication — while not necessarily impossible — remains practically out of reach. Not because the science is invalid, but because the ecosystem is still largely closed. To be fair, there are signs that transparency is improving within China’s academic circles. But for now, much of the international community approaches these results with a natural layer of caution — not out of doubt, but out of distance.
Encryption-busting headlines: a case study in overreach
No better example of this tension exists than the now-infamous RSA episode.
Recently, a series of Chinese papers and media reports hinted — or outright claimed — that RSA encryption had been compromised using quantum techniques. Much of the buzz stemmed from a 2022 preprint that proposed that 2048-bit RSA could be broken with only 372 qubits — a theoretical claim, based on a hybrid quantum-classical method. In 2024, another paper — published in Chinese and largely overlooked outside the country — reported an actual factoring experiment… on a 50-bit RSA key (for context, standard RSA keys today are 2048 bits or more.)
The international response was swift — and skeptical. Bruce Schneier, the renowned cryptographer, described the 372-qubit claim as “not obviously wrong,” but ultimately limited in scale. Crucially, the paper didn’t use Shor’s algorithm — the canonical quantum method for factoring — but rather a hybrid approach based on Schnorr’s algorithm, a classical technique adapted into a quantum-inspired framework — yes, the names are confusingly close— but the implications are worlds apart. That distinction significantly tempers the claim’s impact. No full-scale RSA key was broken. The nuance was clear to cryptographers — less so in press coverage.
Of course, this kind of overstatement isn’t unique to China. As we’ve noted in earlier pieces, Big Tech has its own flair for declaring “firsts” with generous framing. But the RSA episode underscores something specific: when quantum research becomes entangled with national ambition, the line between experimental progress and geopolitical posturing can blur — fast.
To be clear: China has not broken the world’s encryption. But it is working on it — and doing so in ways that will keep cryptographers, intelligence agencies, and post-quantum startups busy for the decade to come.
A very public race, a very different model
Beyond the technical claims, it’s crucial to understand just how differently China’s quantum ecosystem operates compared to the West.
As we noted in our previous analysis, quantum fundraising isn’t always a bed of roses. Yes, we’ve seen some massive rounds recently but those still represent a small, concentrated slice of the global landscape, largely centered in the US — with 2 three-digit rounds in France, we’ll allow ourselves a small patriotic nod.
China, on the other hand, seems to pursue brute-force acceleration — but not through startup fundraising alone. In fact, only one Chinese company, Origin Quantum, appears in our “three-digit club” — and even that should be interpreted cautiously. There are three main reasons:
- Private fundraising data from China is notoriously hard to obtain and verify.
- Many Chinese startups are much younger than their Western counterparts (US-based D-Wave, by contrast, is over 25 years old).
- Most importantly, China’s quantum roadmap is state-led, highly coordinated, and deeply capitalized.
The Hefei-based National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences — where Zuchongzhi was developed — has received nearly $10 billion in funding since 2020. Provincial governments chip in as well, often in tandem with national tech giants like Huawei or Alibaba’s DAMO Academy.
By contrast, most Western breakthroughs emerge from a patchwork: academia, venture-backed startups, and the occasional moonshot unit (Azure Quantum, IBM, Google). This diversity fosters innovation — but also fragmentation, duplication, and slower iteration at the hardware level.
Still, China’s strength isn’t just public funding. Several domestic players — including TuringQ, Huayi Boao, and Bose Quantum — have reportedly secured substantial private capital. And in March 2025, Beijing unveiled a CN¥1 trillion (~$140 billion) national VC guidance fund for strategic technologies. Quantum computing is very much on the list.
So, is China “winning” the race?
It depends on what you’re measuring. In raw scale, Zuchongzhi shows China is now neck-and-neck with the best from the West. In industrialization, it still trails IBM or PsiQuantum — for now. And in cryptography, it’s experimenting — sometimes provocatively, but not yet disruptively.
What’s clear is that China is no longer behind. It’s publishing. It’s building. And it’s catching up far faster than many in the West assumed.
The bigger mistake now would be to miss the signal just because the fog is thicker.
