How AI is thriving in China

Head in his hands, eight -year -old Timmy muttered to himself as he tried to defeat a robot powered by artificial intelligence in a chess game.

But it was not a showroom or a laboratory – this robot lived on a coffee table in a Beijing apartment, along with Timmy.

The first night came home, Timmy hugged his little friend with a robot before heading for the bed. He has no name for that – yet.

“It’s like a little teacher or a little friend,” the boy said as he showed his mother the next move, who was considering chess advice.

Moments later, the robot collided with, “Congratulations! You win.” Round eyes, flashing on the screen, he began to rearrange the pieces to start a new game as he continued in Mandarin: “I saw your ability, I will do better next time.”

China hugs AI in its application to become a technological superpower by 2030.

Deepseek, The Chinese Chatbot breakthrough This caught the attention of the world in January, was just the first hint of this ambition.

The money is poured into an AI business that is looking for more capital by nourishing domestic competition. There are more than 4,500 companies that develop and sell AIs, schools in the capital Beijing are introducing AI courses for primary and average students later this year, and universities have increased the number of places available for students studying AI.

“This is an inevitable tendency. We will exist with AI,” said Timmy’s mother, Jan Sue. “Children should get to know him as early as possible. We should not reject it.”

She wants her son to learn both chess and the game of the strategy of the board – the robot does both, which convinced her that his price of $ 800 is a good investment. Its creators are already planning to add a language teaching program.

Perhaps this was hoping the Chinese Communist Party when in 2017 he announced that AI would be the “main driving force” of the country’s progress. President Jinping is now relying on a big one for him, as the delaying Chinese economy is fighting the hit of the tariffs of its largest trading partner, the United States.

Beijing plans to invest 10TN Chinese yuan ($ 1.4tn; £ 1tn) over the next 15 years as it competes with Washington to win the Advanced Tech advantage. AI funding has received another impetus to the annual political gathering of the government, which is currently underway. This comes on the heels of an investment fund of 60 billion yuan, created in January, just days after the United States further tightened export controls for advanced chips and put more Chinese companies on a trade black list.

But Deepseek has shown that Chinese companies can overcome these barriers. And this is what stunned the Silicon Valley experts and the industry – they did not expect China to catch up so soon.

This is a reaction that Tommy Tang is used to after six months of marketing a robot playing chess at his company in various competitions.

The Timmy Machine comes from the same company SenSerobot, which offers a wide range of capabilities – the Chinese state media welcomed an advanced version in 2022 that defeated chess masters of the game in the game.

“The parents will ask about the price, then they will ask where I am. We expect to come from the US or Europe. They seem surprised to be from China,” said G -N Tang, smiling. “There will always be one or two seconds of silence when I say I’m from China.”

His company has sold more than 100,000 robots and now has a contract with a large supermarket chain in the United States, Costco.

One of the secrets of China’s engineering success is his young people. In 2020, more than 3.5 million students in the country have completed degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, more known as STEM.

This is more than any other country in the world – and Beijing wants to use it. “Building power in education, science and talent is a shared responsibility,” the party leaders told himself last week.

Ever since China opened its economy for the world in the late 1970s, it “went through the process of talents and technology accumulating,” says Abbott Lyu, Vice President of Shanghai-based Walesbot, a company that makes AI Toys. “In this AI era we have many, many engineers and they are hardworking.”

Behind it a dinosaur made of various colored bricks, roars to life. It has been controlled by code assembled on a smartphone for seven years.

The company develops toys to help children up to three learned code. Each pack of bricks comes with a code. Then children can choose what they want to build and learn how to do it. The cheapest toy is sold for about $ 40.

“Other countries have AI educational robots, but as far as competitiveness and intelligent hardware are concerned, China is doing better,” Lyu insists.

Deepseek’s success has made its CEO Liang Wenfeng a national hero and “costs 10 billion yuan advertising for the (Chinese) AI industry,” he added.

“This has informed the public that AI is not only a concept that it can really change people’s lives. It inspires public curiosity.”

Six home -made AI companies, including Deepseek, are now named China’s six small dragons on the Internet – the others are Unitree Robotics, Deep Robotics, Brainco, Game Science and Manycore Tech.

Some of them were at a recent AI Fair in Shanghai, where the largest Chinese businesses in the business showed their progress, from robots to search and rescue to the opposite dog that wandered the halls among visitors.

In a lively exhibition hall, two teams of humanoid robots fought in a football game full of red and blue T -shirts. The machines fell when they were confronted – and one of them was even removed from the pitch to a stretcher by his human leader, who wanted to continue to joke.

It was difficult to miss the air of excitement among developers after Deepseek. “Deepseek means the world knows we are here,” said Yu Ginger, a 26-year-old engineer.

But since the world learns about the potential of AI in China, there is also concerns about what AI allows the Chinese government to learn about its consumers.

AI is hungry for data – the more it becomes, the more intelligent it does and with about a billion mobile phone users compared to just over 400 million in the United States, Beijing has a real advantage.

The West, its allies and many experts in these countries, believe that data collected from Chinese applications such as Deepseek, Rednote or Tiktok can be available by the Chinese Communist Party. Some point to the national legislation of the country’s intelligence as proof of this.

But Chinese companies, including Bytedance, which owns Tiktok, says the law allows the protection of private companies and personal data. Still, the suspicion that US users’ data for Tiktok may be in the hands of the Chinese government managed Washington’s decision to ban the extremely popular appS

The same fear – when confidential concerns meet the challenges of national security – it hits Deepseek. South Korea prohibited New DEPEPEK downloadsWhile Taiwan and Australia have prohibit the app by government devices issuedS

Chinese companies are aware of this sensitivity and D -N -Tang quickly told the BBC that “confidentiality is a red line” for his company. Beijing also realizes that this will be a challenge in his proposal to be a global leader in AI.

“Deepseek’s rapid rise has caused hostile reactions from some to the West,” said a comment on the State Daily Daily, adding that “the AI ​​development environment in China remains very uncertain.”

But Chinese AI companies do not deter. More recently, they believe that frugal innovations will gain them an indisputable advantage – because it was Deepseek’s claim that it could compete with Chatgpt for some of the costs that shocked the AI ​​industry.

So the engineering challenge is how to do more, in less. “It was our mission impossible,” said G -n Tang. His company has found that the robotic hand used to move chess pieces is extremely expensive to produce and will lead to the price of about $ 40,000.

So, they tried to use AI to help do the engineers and improve the production process. D -N Tang claims he has reduced the cost to $ 1,000.

“It’s an innovation,” he says. “Artificial engineering is already integrated into the production process.”

This can have huge consequences as China applies AI on a huge scale. The state media already show factories full of humanoid robots. In January, the government said it would encourage the development of AI’s humanoid robots to take care of its rapidly aging population.

XI has repeatedly declared “technological independence” as a key purpose, which means that China wants to create its own sophisticated chips to compensate for US export restrictions that could interfere with his plans.

The Chinese leader knows it is a long race-Beijing Day has warned that Deepseek’s moment is not time for AI’s “triumphage” because China is still in “catch-up mode”.

The president invests strongly in artificial intelligence, robots and advanced technology, preparing for a marathon that China hopes to eventually win.