Catherine Thorbecke, Columnist

Chinese AI’s Secret to Withstanding the Trade War

DeepSeek exuberance, government support and insatiable demand will offset tariffs.

April 22, 2025 at 8:00 PM UTC

Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News.

The Chinese population is a big adopter of AI. — The Chinese population is a big adopter of AI.
Photographer: Lam Yik/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

While the world has been caught up in a whirlwind of tariff news out of Washington, it has been easy to miss a separate barrage of artificial intelligence announcements from China.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. released a new open-source model for generating videos, so-called Little Dragon Zhipu AI filed early paperwork for an initial public offering as early as this year, and DeepSeek has been deployed everywhere from hospitals to local governments. The list goes on.