This prediction is about a conditional and multi‑year outcome:

If the U.S. hobbles its AI industry with unnecessary regulations while China does not, then China will win the AI race over the ensuing years.

As of 30 November 2025, both sides of that conditional and the long‑term outcome are not clearly settled:

1. Has the U.S. “hobbled” its AI industry with heavy regulations while China stayed lax?

   • Federally, the U.S. actually moved toward deregulation in 2025: Trump’s Executive Order 14179 is explicitly titled “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” and rescinds Biden’s more restrictive Executive Order 14110, aiming to roll back policies seen as constraints on AI development. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Some U.S. states, notably California, have introduced targeted frontier‑model safety and transparency rules (e.g., SB‑53 / Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act), but these are still relatively new, and there is an ongoing political fight over whether federal law will pre‑empt stricter state regulation. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • China, for its part, has also rolled out substantial AI regulations, including 2023–2025 generative‑AI rules requiring algorithm registration, security reviews, and mandatory labeling of AI‑generated content, with new labeling measures taking effect in September 2025. (cimplifi.com)
     Given this, it is not accurate to say the U.S. is clearly hobbling itself while China refrains from similar or stronger controls; both are regulating, but in different ways.

2. Has China clearly “won” the global AI race by late 2025?
   Available indicators point to a competitive, mixed picture rather than a decisive Chinese win:

   • On investment and market leadership, the U.S. remains far ahead in private AI investment (about $109B vs. China’s $9.3B in 2024) and is widely projected to remain the front‑runner in global AI market share and frontier model development through 2030, with China as a fast‑growing second pole. (allaboutai.com)
   • On overall capability indices, a 2025 comparative AI index finds the U.S. composite AI score (68.1) still exceeds China’s (59.4), even though China is catching up quickly and shows strong regional clusters. (arxiv.org)
   • On research output and specific niches, China leads the world in share of AI publications and is surging in some model benchmarks and in the global market for open‑weight models, where recent work shows Chinese models slightly surpassing U.S. models in download share (17% vs. 15.8%) and performance on some tests. (arxiv.org)

3. Timeframe: “over the ensuing years”
   The statement was made in February 2025; only about nine months have elapsed. The prediction explicitly concerns a multi‑year trajectory (“ensuing years”) of global leadership. Current data show an ongoing, evolving competition rather than a settled outcome, and many forecasts still treat 2025–2030 as the decisive window rather than a period whose results are already known. (allaboutai.com)

Because (a) the antecedent conditions (U.S. uniquely hobbling itself while China does not) have not clearly materialized, and (b) the long‑term outcome (China definitively winning the AI race) cannot reasonably be judged this early and is not reflected in present indicators, the prediction cannot yet be evaluated as right or wrong.

So the appropriate classification is “inconclusive (too early to tell).”