Ah yes,
“China made a successful leap that out preforms US tech companies in every way so hard that it caused US tech stocks to crash. Could this be a sign of China’s collapse?”
Pathetic 
While I am against corporations exploiting LLM “AI” for profit in general, after using DeepSeek I have to admit it is way, way better than Chat GPT.
The US got owned hard and they think pretending they didn’t will make that go away lmao. Same Strat they’ve had since Vietnam, I guess.
Because it’s a widely accepted idea? They might be trying to challenge that idea. But again, I could be wrong, since I haven’t read the article.
And why do you think it’s a widely accepted idea despite China not being in decline?
Because many people are invested or hoping for such a thing. There is some evidence for it. And those people who are invested in that idea, use that evidence constantly. By ignoring it you let it grow, once an idea has grown so large you need to instead challenge it.
Or maybe they just want people to see the headline, the words “China” and “decline” and move on. I highly doubt the Australian Financial Review is seriously wanting to challenge the idea of Chinese decline.