ChinAI #307: Around the Horn (19th edition)

Greetings from a world where…

DOGE has shut down the Wilson Center. One of the most rewarding parts of my career has been teaching sessions on China’s AI development at the Wilson Center AI labs, which provided nonpartisan educational programs on emerging technology to mid- to senior-level Congressional and Executive Branch staff. I was fortunate to start working with the Wilson Center AI labs in 2018 back when the program was just starting up. In total, the program has trained over 1,300 government staff. What else is there to say?

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Around the Horn (19th edition)

The ESPN show Around the Horn will air its last episode on May 23. In its honor, let’s go Around the Horn for this week’s ChinAI issue. If you’re new to this format, here’s how it works (see ChinAI #297 for previous edition):

• I give short previews of ten articles that caught my interest as I was scanning through sources (all published within the past week or so). The title for each preview links to the original article in Chinese.

• Readers vote on next week’s feature translation by replying to the email and/or commenting on the post with the number of your preferred article. *Votes from readers who are paid subscribers to ChinAI count a little more.

• The main idea is that any of these 10 links would have made for a great feature translation this week — like Zach Lowe NBA podcasts, there are no skips!

1) How has the West’s misjudgment of China’s AI ecosystem distorted the global technology competition landscape?

Summary: In an interesting take, the editors of Wenhua Zongheng argue that OpenAI’s recent lobbying of the government to ban “authoritarian AI” from China is rooted in mis-assessments of China’s AI ecosystem. Specifically, they highlight U.S. views on “accelerationism” and exaggerated stakes in U.S.-China competition.

Source: 文化纵横 (Wenhua Zongheng) — leading platform for contemporary political and cultural thought, which also publishes a quarterly journal.

2) Hormones hot on the trend, AI sex robots are unstoppable

Summary: How is the integration of AI technology transforming the humanoid robot industry? According to one estimate from this article, the Chinese market will account for more than 40% of the sex robot market in 2025.

Source: 定焦One (dingjiaoone) — innovation-focused portal based in Beijing (article re-posted and recommended by Huxiu)

3) Domestic journals collectively rise in tiers, CAS journal rankings spark controversy

Summary: The Chinese Academy of Sciences was supposed to release its annual journal rankings at the end of 2024. After a three month delay, CAS announced significant changes in its rankings: internationally renowned journals such as Nano Letters were downgraded to Tier 2, while Chinese-language journals have entered the higher tiers. These rankings reverberate: top universities rely on them for promotions and evaluations.

Source: 知识分子 (The Intellectual) — a platform that covers the state of science in China, founded by Chinese and Chinese-American scientists. *I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Yu Xie, one of the co-founders of this platform last week actually!

4) Who understands Narwal Robotics[云鲸]?

Summary: Narwal Robotics, one of China’s leading smart cleaning robot companies, wanted to be the next DJI. What happened? An insider’s look at how this consumer electronics company wasn’t able to keep the dust off.

Source: 雷峰网 (Leiphone) — media portal that covers China’s science and tech landscape, with a focus on AI-related happenings.

5) DeepSeek came to my company to lay off employees

Summary: This piece starts with the line: DeepSeek has become a “shadow deputy director of human resources.” It then pivots to a fascinating exploration of the circuit of “AI trainers” who go around to companies and provide tutorials on how to use DeepSeek and other language models.

Source: 真故研究室 via IT桔子 (IT Juzi) — good source on financing and venture capital in technology fields.

6) Chinese Large Language Model Benchmark Evaluation March 2025 Report

Summary: SuperCLUE monthly check-ins make frequent appearances in these Around the Horn issues. This March report focuses on the performance of reasoning models such as OpenAI’s o3-mini. DeepSeek R1, Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and Alibaba’s QwQ-32B. It also includes comparisons of inference efficiency and between distilled versions of DeepSeek R1.

Source: CLUE中文语言理解测评基准 (SuperCLUE) — organization that tests the capabilities of large language models from Chinese and international labs.

7) Breaking Down Tencent’s recent NDR

Summary: This article summarizes some notes from Tencent’s Non-Deal Roadshow — a meeting in which the company held discussions with current and potential investors. Includes interesting notes on why Tencent places less priority on GPU rental compared to Alibaba.

Source: 共识粉碎机 (portal I came across from the AI Proem substack) — this is a bit more finance-y than my usual tastes, and I’m not going to lie: I struggled a lot to figure out what the heck NDR stood for.

8) Controversy over Android’s “Fake Open Source, Closed in Reality”: Where should developers go?

Summary: This piece reviews Chinese developers’ reactions to news that Google is moving away from open-source development of Android. It also explores what this development means for Huawei’s open-source ambitions with its HarmonyOS platform.

Source: 硅星人 (Gui Xingren) — ChinAI previously translated their article about the diffusion of large models to government-facing applications, using data from the Chinese procurement market.

9) The mass-copied AI chubby grandson became my grandma’s “cyber nipple.”

Sourced from ETO’s discovery tool for Chinese-language commentary on tech issues. Here’s Scout’s summary: “AI-generated videos featuring virtual grandchildren have captivated many elderly Chinese, offering emotional comfort but also raising concerns about misinformation and manipulation. This netizen commentary warns that elderly-targeted content is being exploited by marketing accounts to spread misleading narratives about family, health, and longevity, influencing vulnerable seniors' perceptions and even leading to real-life tragedies, citing the example of an elderly man who committed suicide due to a deceptive online video.”

Source: 酷玩实验室 (Coollabs) — covers China’s technological development and industrial upgrading. Produce a lot of Douyin content too.

10) Of the world’s top ten AI apps, half are made in China: Quark, Doubao, DeepSeek, Yuanbao, and Talkie are the new five little dragons rising

Summary: This is the eight edition of the ranking exercise, which tracks monthly active users of both Chinese and global AI products. It provides a good overview of what platforms have broken through to the general public, highlighting risers and fallers over time. It would be interesting to systematically compare this list with Andreesen Horowitz’s similar ranking of the top 100 GenAI consumer apps.

Source: AI 产品榜 (aicpb) — a very cool portal that tracks 10,000+ AI products across 100 AI application subfields.

Thank you for reading and engaging.

These are Jeff Ding's (sometimes) weekly translations of Chinese-language musings on AI and related topics. Jeff is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University.

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