It's literally in the article.

Last year China overtook the U.S. in terms of AI-related academic citations for the first time, accounting for 20.7% of the total, versus 19.8% for the U.S., according to a report from Stanford University. Since 2012, China has released 240,000 academic papers on AI, far outstripping the U.S. which has published 150,000, according to British research specialist Clarivate.

It means they'll be leading in AI research and have leading industry applications for AI as a result. Applications they can export to the rest of the world before anyone else. Applications they can use in their military before anyone else.