How AI is booming in China

Head In Hands, Timmy, eight years old, murmured to himself while trying to beat a robot driven by artificial intelligence in a chess game.

But this was not an AI exhibition or laboratory room: this robot lived on a coffee table in a Beijing apartment, along with Timmy.

The first night that came home, Timmy hugged his little friend Robot before going to bed. It still has no name, yet.

“It’s like a little teacher or a little friend,” said the child, while showing his mother the next movement he was considering on the chess board.

Moments later, the robot intervened: “Congratulations!” Round eyes flashing on the screen, began to reorganize the pieces to start a new game while I continued in Mandarin: “I have seen your ability, I will do it better next time.”

China is adopting AI in its attempt to become a technological superpower by 2030.

Deepseek, Chinese Chinese advance That caught the attention of the world in January, it was only the first track of that ambition.

The money is reaching AI businesses in search of more capital, feeding national competition. There are more than 4,500 companies that develop and sell AI, schools in the capital, Beijing, present AI courses for primary and secondary students at the end of this year, and universities have increased the number of places available for students studying AI.

“This is an inevitable trend. We will coexist with AI,” said Timmy’s mother Yan Xue. “Children should know him as soon as possible. We should not reject it.”

She is interested in her son from learning both chess and strategy board game: the robot does both, which persuaded her that her price of $ 800 was a good investment. Its creators already plan to add a language tutoring program.

Perhaps this was what the Chinese communist party expected when it declared in 2017 that AI would be “the main driving force” of the country’s progress. President Xi Jinping is now betting on him, since a decelerated Chinese economy fights with the tariffs of its largest commercial partner, United States.

Beijing plans to invest 10 Chinese yuan ($ 1.4tn; £ 1tn) in the next 15 years, since it competes with Washington to gain the advantage in advanced technology. The financing of AI obtained another impulse in the annual political meeting of the Government, which is currently underway. This comes immediately after a Yuan-AI investment fund created in January, a few days after the United States harden more export controls for advanced chips and placed more Chinese companies in a commercial commercial list.

But Deepseek has shown that Chinese companies can overcome these barriers. And that is what has surprised Silicon Valley and experts in the industry: they did not expect China to get up to date.

It is a reaction to which Tommy Tang has become accustomed after six months of marketing the chess robot of his company in several competitions.

Timmy’s machine comes from the same company, Senserobot, which offers a wide range of skills: Chinese state media praised an advanced version in 2022 that beat Chess Grand Masters in the game.

“Parents will ask about the price, then ask where I am. They expect it to come from the United States or Europe. They seem surprised that I am from China,” Tang said, smiling. “There will always be one or two seconds of silence when I say that I am from China.”

His signature has sold more than 100,000 of the robots and now has a contract with an important American supermarket chain, Costco.

One of the secrets of China’s engineering is its young people. In 2020, more than 3.5 million students in the country graduated with titles in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, better known as Stem.

That is more than any other country in the world, and Beijing is eager to take advantage of it. “Building strength in education, science and talent is a shared responsibility,” XI told the party leaders last week.

Since China opened its economy to the world in the late 1970s, it has “passed through a process of accumulation of talent and technology,” says Abbott Lyu, vice president of Whatbot based in Shanghai, a company that manufactures AI toys. “In this age, we have many, many engineers, and they are workers.”

Behind him, a dinosaur made of diverse colored bricks roars life. The code is being controlled through the assembly code on a smartphone by a seven -year -old child.

The company is developing toys to help children up to three years to learn code. Each brick pack comes with a code brochure. Children can choose what they want to build and learn to do it. The cheapest toy is sold for around $ 40.

“Other countries also have artificial intelligence educational robots, but when it comes to intelligent competitiveness and hardware, China is better,” Lyu insists.

Deepseek’s success turned his CEO Liang Wenfeng into a national hero and “is worth 10 billion advertising yuan for the AI ​​industry (China),” he added.

“He has made the public know that AI is not just a concept, which in fact can change people’s lives. He has inspired public curiosity.”

Internet, six local firms, including Depseek, have been nicknamed the six small Dragons of China online: the others are Robotics Unitree, Deep Robotics, Brainco, Game Science and Many Core Tech.

Some of them were at a recent AI

In a bustling exhibition room, two humanoid robots teams fought in a football game, complete in red and blue t -shirts. The machines fell when they faced, and one of them was even taken from the field on a stretcher by its human handling that was anxious to keep the joke running.

It was difficult to lose the air of emotion among developers due to Deepseek. “Deepseek means that the world knows we are here,” said Yu Jingji, a 26 -year -old engineer.

But as the world finds out about China’s potential, there are also concerns about what is allowing the Chinese government to learn about its users.

AI is hungry for data: the more it becomes, the more intelligent it makes itself and, with around one billion mobile phone users compared to just over 400 million in the US. UU., Beijing has a real advantage.

The West, their allies and many experts in these countries believe that the Chinese Communist Party can access the data collected by Chinese applications such as Deepseek, Rednote or Tiktok. Some point to the country’s national intelligence law as evidence of this.

But Chinese companies, including the Bytedonce, which Tiktok has, says that the law allows the protection of private companies and personal data. Even so, the suspicion that the data of the United States users about Tiktok could end up in the hands of the Chinese government led Washington’s decision to ban very popular application.

That same fear, where privacy concerns face national security challenges, is affecting Deepseek. South Korea prohibited New Deepseek downloadswhile Taiwan and Australia have prohibited the application of devices issued by the Government.

Chinese companies are aware of these sensibilities and Tang hastened quickly to the BBC that “privacy was a red line” for their company. Beijing also realizes that this will be a challenge in his attempt to be a world leader in AI.

“The rapid increase in Deepseek has caused hostile reactions of some in the West,” said a comment in the state of Beijing daily, adding that “the development environment for China’s models is still very uncertain.”

But China’s companies are not deterred. Rather, they believe that saver innovation will beat them an undeniable advantage, because it was Deepseek’s statement that it could rival Chatgpt due to a fraction of the cost that shocked the AI ​​industry.

So, the engineering challenge is how to do more, for less. “This was our impossible mission,” Tang said. His company discovered that the robotic arm used to move chess pieces was very expensive to produce and generate the price to around $ 40,000.

Therefore, they tried to use AI to help do engineers and improve the manufacturing process. Tang states that it has reduced the cost to $ 1,000.

“This is innovation,” he says. “Artificial engineering is now integrated into the manufacturing process.”

This could have huge implications since China applies to a wide scale. The state media already show factories full of humanoid robots. In January, the government said it would promote the development of humanoid robots with AI to help care of its population that ages quickly.

XI has repeatedly declared the “technological self -sufficiency” a key objective, which means that China wants to create its own advanced chips, to compensate for US export restrictions that could hinder their plans.

The Chinese leader knows that he is in a long career: Beijing’s newspaper recently warned that the deep moment was not a time for the “triumphalism of AI” because China was still in “mode of recovery.”

President XI is strongly investing in artificial intelligence, robots and advanced technology in preparation for a marathon that expects China to eventually win.