ChinAI #326: Around the Horn (21st episode)

Greetings from a world where…

summer has come and passed (hopefully)

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Around the Horn (21st episode)

In many ways, Around the Horn issues reflect the whole purpose of ChinAI — if you want to learn more about China, read the stuff that smart Chinese people are reading and writing.

This is our 21st trip around the horn. Here’s how it works (see ChinAI #316 for the 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 True Detective season 1 and 3, there are no skips!

1) Can WeCom Cure Companies’ “AI anxiety”?

Summary: Like their American counterparts, Chinese business managers have found that AI tools seem to not generate the promised productivity boosts. Can WeCom — Tencent’s communication and office tool, which connects to WeChat — solve these anxieties?

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

2) The Suzhou Woman at Nvidia’s Throat

Summary: A profile of Luo Weiwei, a former NASA scientist, who returned to China to start Innoscience. Her company is the only Chinese supplier of Nvidia’s 800 VDC power architecture.

Source: 量子位 (QbitAI) — news portal that regularly covers AI issues, similar to Leiphone. They also publish longer reports like this one.

3) The Truth of AI Entrepreneurship in 2025

Summary: Based on twelve face-to-face interviews with developers, this piece looks at the unglamorous shortcomings of China’s AI start-up scene. One developer’s AI agent product had gained tens of thousands of users but had fewer than 10 paying subscribers.

Source: 钛媒体创投家 via IT桔子 (IT Juzi) — good source on financing and venture capital in technology fields.

4) Hot Topic: A Mysterious “极" character bug appears in DeepSeek V3.1 . Is the model malfunctioning?

Summary: On August 21, DeepSeek open-sourced its latest base model V3.1. After a week of testing it out, users found a puzzling bug: some of the outputs were randomly replaced with the Chinese character "极" (meaning: extreme). What are the possible causes?

Source: 机器之心 (jiqizhixin) — media portal similar to Leiphone in coverage.

5) Data Labeling Industry Development Research Report

Summary: This report summarizes the current status of China’s data labeling industry. It then analyzes development trends before identifying challenges such as establishing clear standards and training labelers.

Source: 中国信通院 (CAICT) — The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology is a think tank under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

6) Building High-Quality Datasets for AI Guidebook

Summary: Another CAICT report! This one looks at the current outlook for building high-quality datasets, with details on key policies and example applications. The section on “establishing an AI data engineering system” [建立AI数据工程体系] intrigued me.

Source: 中国信通院 (CAICT)

7) When the Stars of High-Performance Computing Shine

Summary: A deep dive into the history of China’s high-performance computing industry, traced through the career of one of its key figures — Zheng Weimin. Now, HPC engineers play a prominent role in training large language models.

Source: AI科技评论(aitechtalk) — focuses on in-depth reports on developments in the AI industry and academia.

8) When Scenic Spots use Facial Recognition for Photos: Does it free up tourists or make it easier for others to spy

Summary: The Nandu Personal Information Protection Research Center team conducts some field tests to investigate: As facial recognition diffuses to scenic spot photography services, what risks lie hidden behind this convenience?

Source: 隐私护卫队 — a portal connected to the Nandu Personal Information Protection Research Center.

9) Strategic reading of China’s “AI+” Strategy

Summary: This article provides an in-depth breakdown of the State Council’s recent Action Plan on AI development. The plan outlines a 2035 goal for universal adoption of AI, on the same level as electricity and the internet.

Source: 机器之心 (jiqizhixin) — media portal similar to Leiphone in coverage.

10) Under 40°C heat, a block of ice drifts through the city

Summary: China has experienced an unprecedented heatwave. This longform piece tackles this story from a fascinating angle: an ice factory that produces 100-kg blocks of ice — necessities for vegetable markets, constructions sites, coal mines, and other locations.

Source: 极昼工作室 (Perpetual Light Studio), a reporting unit under Sohu that does longform human-interest stories.

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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