© Daniel Rodrigues for The New York Times
© Alex Kent/The New York Times
Lack of profits and the threat posed by western countries are raising concern about the sustainability of Beijing’s AI boom
Trillions of dollars have been wiped from China’s stock markets in recent months amid increasing anxiety about the future of artificial intelligence, as Beijing races against the United States for dominance in the sector.
The STAR 50 Index, which tracks technology and innovation companies on the Shanghai stock exchange, has plunged 40% since June. Other indexes of major companies dropped by about 20% over the same time period.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images
© Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images
© Photograph: China News Service/Getty Images
Faced with a stagnant jobs market, many are spurning children or pets in favour of ‘raising bricks’
Young adults in China looking for a cheaper, low-maintenance alternative to having children or pets have found an answer: raising bricks.
Bricks may not be as cuddly as cats or as life-affirming as human offspring, but they also cost next to nothing. “No cats, no dating, I started raising a brick,” wrote one brick parent on social media.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: xiaohongshu.com
© Photograph: xiaohongshu.com
© Photograph: xiaohongshu.com
The fifth plenum comes against a backdrop of years of purges that have had some analysts wondering if the issue is corruption or a lack of loyalty
When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, he pledged to stamp out corruption all through the ranks of the Communist party. More than a decade later, the pace of investigations has not slowed. Last year, China’s disciplinary authorities opened investigations into more than 1 million people, including more than 100 officials at or above ministerial or provincial level.
As Chinese Communist party (CCP) officials kick off an important meeting this week, discipline – and party loyalty – is high on the agenda. For those who try to read the tea leaves of elite Chinese politics, concern about the apparent lack of discipline is dominating CCP discussions.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
© Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
© Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
The national conversation about AI in the US is full of fear: fear about AI’s potential to end humanity, fear of data centers moving in, fear that government officials will do absolutely nothing even as the industry pleads for regulation, you name it.
But the AI conversation looks remarkably different across the Pacific.
In China, driven by public enthusiasm and a state-backed push for AI dominance, the country is in the midst of a large-scale AI integration into all facets of its society, driven by Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s support for the technology.
“He’s super AI-pilled,“ said Kyle Chan, an expert on China’s technology development and industrial policy at the Brookings Institution. “When you look at his speeches, when you look at Chinese policy documents, everything is about rolling AI out to as many domains as possible: manufacturing, services, education, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and of course the military. Everything is about trying to integrate AI.”
Beneath this push for a high-speed AI adoption across Chinese society lies a regulatory framework designed to safeguard political stability and keep boundaries on the kind of information AI models are able to share.
Chan joined Vox’s Today, Explained podcast to speak with co-host Sean Rameswaram about the different AI anxieties in the US and China, and whether joint regulations on AI safety are possible while the two countries are engaged in an AI arms race.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
One thing that really struck me about the way the Chinese government is approaching AI is that China has this explicit goal, right?
China has some concrete plans to boost AI adoption through the country, including its recent AI-plus initiative. And their goal is to try to boost the penetration of AI in so-called terminal devices, everything from computers to smartphones, to 90 percent or more by 2030.
It’s going really fast and it is, in part, a state mobilization effort. There are state-owned companies, there are government agencies that are trying to integrate AI, but also there’s just an enthusiasm from the general population.
If you look at surveys like the latest Gallup poll, people in China are much more enthusiastic and positive about how AI might help them and help the country. It’s quite a striking contrast with what you see in the US in terms of attitudes towards AI.
Because people here are worried about AI as an existential threat. People here are worried about AI taking their jobs, people here are worried about AI data centers in their backyards. Is that not the vibe in China?
Not so much. There is some concern about AI and jobs. But in general, China’s not worried about AI wiping out humanity. You really don’t hear that from the Chinese policymakers. There’s no talk about a P(doom), the probability that AI will wipe out humanity. So this is just a different approach to AI risk in general.
And why not the existential risk?
You know, one factor, I think, is sci-fi and the culture.
Huh. We’ve watched too many movies?
It seems like every major sci-fi book or film involves machines trying to kill us all, and I think that that idea has become very prevalent.
When you imagine a future with AI, that is one of the primary futures that people imagine, versus in China, I think a lot of the attitude towards technology in general, not just AI, is about using this edge to keep up and to become more competitive.
For a lot of people in China, technology was something that they saw transform their lives in real time. And Chinese leaders think it’s the key to China’s future modernization and transformation to a global superpower.
Let’s talk about what concerns there are.
One of the biggest concerns that Chinese political leaders have when it comes to AI is political and social instability. They don’t want AI-generated content to act the way that social media or the internet broadly could, which is to disseminate information, maybe deepfakes, maybe viral news that could threaten the [Chinese Communist Party’s] hold on power.
For AI-generated content, it was about making sure that the models didn’t say the wrong things about sensitive topics. A lot of this is about social and political risk rather than about existential technological risk per se.
From pretty early on, China has been developing a model registration system where basically AI services have to be vetted in advance and go through a battery of tests where they’re asked sensitive political questions and they’re supposed to either not answer them or say the “right thing” before they are officially registered. And once they’re registered, then they can be released to the public. So it’s a pretty tight regulatory framework for controlling things like political content.
We know that there’s a high unemployment rate in China, especially among young people, which is also a great concern of the government. Are people worried that this bullish approach to AI could affect employment numbers?
Yes and no. On the one hand, China is actually facing this demographic problem with a shrinking labor force. Fewer people want to go into, say, factory jobs, but China still wants to make everything the world wants to buy.
They see AI as a partial solution to that, a way to automate things like manufacturing. On the other hand, though, there are growing concerns in China about job loss. And you see also some recent court cases in China where they basically are telling employers, you cannot use AI as a reason to fire workers.
But I think overall, what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to find this balance between the diffusion of the technology and trying to prevent any kind of large-scale protest movement that might arise from sudden mass unemployment of, say, factory workers or food delivery drivers.
And President Xi was of course here in Washington last week. From the limited photos we have of the state dinner or of President Trump and President Xi on the tarmac, everything looks so chummy, even though we are so clearly in a cold war with China over AI. The president’s always talking about how he wants to win.
Was there tension in his visit to Washington last week? Did you notice any?
The weird thing is that just between these two men, there seems to be this kind of romance where Trump really fawns over Xi Jinping.
I think he has tremendous respect, even admiration, for Xi Jinping’s grip on power and control over the government apparatus in general.
What is happening under the surface, though, is continuing tensions and a deep competitive structural relationship. That involves especially competition in AI. AI has emerged as a new fault line of competition between the US and China, one that could come to define the relationship going forward.
I think that on the one hand, they’re talking about cooperation on things like AI safety and AI risk. On the other hand, there’s a whole bunch of issues where the US wants to lead. China wants to also get ahead. And when it comes to things like distillation or cyber capabilities, it’s as zero-sum as it’s ever been.
Who’s winning?
It depends on what you’re looking at and how you define winning. If you’re talking about the best models, for sure the US. And virtually everyone in China would agree, right? In fact, Anthropic’s Claude is very popular in China, even though technically Anthropic bans its use in China.
But aren’t their open-source models kind of popular here?
Yes, exactly. Chinese open-source models are getting more popular in the US, especially at a time when some of the capabilities are so incredible that most normal people don’t really need them, and they also don’t want to pay for the most advanced and most expensive models. Ultimately it’s this weird sort of cooperation and competition at the same time.
American models are popular in China. Chinese models are popular in America. We’re at each other’s throats, but quietly, politely.
Does the cold war make it all but certain that safety isn’t going to really be a chief priority for either country until something terrible happens?
The fierce level of competition and the very, very deep distrust between the two countries makes any kind of cooperation on AI safety very, very difficult. Even just talking to each other, having the US and China establish an official AI dialogue, which apparently they’ve agreed to, is seen as a huge first step, even though they’re just talking.
There’s a long, long road to go before we can even think about something like an arms control treaty or a broader international agreement about AI and AI safety. But I think that’s what some people, especially in Silicon Valley, are trying to jump to.
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
I have good news and bad news for the holiday shoppers in the audience.
The good news is that the US and China announced this morning — in the wake of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to DC — that the two countries are suspending tariffs on $60 billion of goods, including Christmas ornaments, toys and other tchotchkes.
The bad news is that, because retailers ship goods for the winter holidays well in advance, these reductions might come a bit too late to affect this year’s bills. But there’s always 2027, right? Barring another unforeseen trade altercation.
The tariff rollback represents a real and continued de-escalation in the trade war between China and the US, which — at one point last year — was slapping Chinese goods with a whopping 145 percent tariff.
But it’s not a conclusive truce, either. The new agreement doesn’t address the touchiest products for either country, like rare earth minerals (which are used in electronics and clean energy tech) and advanced chips (which are critical to AI development). China also didn’t lower its tariffs on soybeans, which have hit some American farmers so hard they’re thinking of voting for Democrats.
There’s a certain irony to President Donald Trump’s about-face on the Chinese tariffs, incomplete though it may be. For years, the president made confrontation with China central to his political identity and reaped the benefits in votes. Now he appears to be circling back to what was, for decades, the mainstream, default Republican position: Namely, that more and freer trade with China is ultimately good for American consumers and businesses.
President Richard Nixon first set that tone 54 years ago, when he famously became the first US president to visit Beijing. Subsequent GOP leaders leaned further into free trade with China, even as they railed against the evils of communism. Greater trade will bring “great benefits…to all our peoples,” George W. Bush said in a 2001 statement celebrating China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.
But those “great benefits” were a mixed bag for some Americans, history suggests. The price of US consumer goods did fall in the early 2000s as trade between the US and China exploded. At the same time, US manufacturing towns suffered job losses so severe and concentrated that some still haven’t recovered.
Those job losses may have helped propel Trump to the White House, at least in his first term. Researchers have found that communities hit hardest by Chinese competition elected more extreme Congressional candidates in 2010, and then swung hardest to Trump in the 2016 election.
One 2016 paper by a highly regarded team of economists actually calculated that — in an alternate reality where US-China trade grew half as quickly between 2001 and 2016 — Hillary Clinton would have won North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan…and thus, the presidency.
In other words, Trump tapped into real harms and anxieties when he veered from the GOP’s usual stance on China 10 years ago. And he might be attempting to address new economic anxieties about inflation and living costs by reversing his course on China again now.
Call it Trump’s Nixon-to-China moment. The question, of course, is whether voters will give Trump credit for (partially) solving a problem that he himself created.
➨ “Microdose” movement. As the weather gradually and inexorably gets colder, many of us will see our daily step counts fall off. You could do as the Swedes do and load up on layers…or you could stay safely indoors and try microdosing movement. Just five minutes every half hour can help reduce the health impacts of extended sitting. Try tying little walks to a specific cue, like the need to refill your water bottle or the end of a meeting.
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
President Donald Trump rolled out the literal red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday afternoon, greeting his plane with a military band and a jet flyover at Maryland’s Joint Base Andrews.
It’s a very warm welcome for the man Trump once dubbed his “enemy,” and it reflects a fascinating, dramatic shift in his tone toward China — a country that Americans have also come to view more favorably over the past five years. (More on that about-face in just a minute.)
Trump and Xi have lots to discuss during this week’s state visit. On Wednesday, the two countries agreed to extend the current pause in their on-again, off-again trade war — but that kicks several pressing issues, like technology restrictions and access to critical minerals, further down the road.
AI safety advocates are also hoping the two leaders can reach some kind of agreement to slow down or safeguard AI development, following calls from a chorus of American tech executives.
Several of those execs are expected to attend a state dinner at the White House this evening, though the prospects of any substantive AI accord still seem pretty slim. This is more a sip-sparkling-wine-and-see-the-Archives kind of meeting than a signing-big-deals visit.
Trump isn’t the only one reassessing China these days. A trio of recent polls found that Americans also feel markedly more positive about China than they did five years ago, with the largest gains among young people. On average, American sentiment toward China is about the same today as it was 10 years ago — before Trump launched his first trade war.
What changed Americans’ minds about China? There is undoubtedly no one cause. It probably helps that Trump himself has changed his tune, no longer portraying the relationship between the US and China as an existential rivalry between so-called great powers.
Americans’ views on China have also recovered steadily since the Covid-19 pandemic, as memories of that period fade into the rearview. And foreign-policy issues — like, say, the status of Taiwan — generally aren’t top of mind for the average American voter.
But there’s also a cultural component here, particularly for young Americans. “Younger Americans are less wedded to notions of American primacy and more comfortable with coexistence,” Ryan Hass, a China scholar at the Brookings Institute, posted on X.
Many young Americans have, in fact, grown up embracing aspects of Chinese culture, from TikTok to Labubu. And there’s a pervasive sense, in some corners, that Western-style capitalism hasn’t precisely delivered the goods.
But let’s not kid ourselves here — China has plenty of problems, too. Like an economic slowdown, a mounting demographic crisis, and a culture of widespread political repression, to name just a few. For now, at least, an increasingly hostile US isn’t one of them.
➨ Go ahead: Eat the wheat gluten. Health SecretaryRobert F. Kennedy Jr. (and many, many others) have warned against the dangers of so-called ultra-processed foods. But the buzzy label lumps some nutritious items, like whole-grain bread and plant-based meats, with the likes of Twinkies and Oreos. To gauge if something’s actually healthy, check its nutrition label. And likewise, don’t make the mistake of assuming a food’s good for you just because it claims to be minimally processed.
Login