Category: China

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AI China

What’s new in AI from China?

February 2026 is a busy time in AI coming out of China coinciding with the Chinese New Year.

I asked Grok this morning for an update and double checked it with Gemini.

Here’s what Grok reported:

Chinese AI is in a very active phase right now (mid-February 2026), with a massive wave of new model releases, upgrades, and applications timed around the Lunar New Year (Spring Festival) holiday. This echoes the “DeepSeek shock” from exactly one year ago, when DeepSeek’s low-cost, high-performance models disrupted global expectations.

Major Recent Releases and Upgrades (mostly this month)

Chinese companies are shipping frontier-level models at a furious pace, often open-source or very low-cost, focusing on efficiency, reasoning, coding, multimodality, agents, and real-world applications.

  • Alibaba → Just launched Qwen 3.5 (with agentic features, multimodal inputs like text + photo + video, up to 2-hour video analysis). They also released RynnBrain (specialized for physical AI/robotics, helping robots understand and interact with the real world).
  • ByteDance (TikTok parent) → Released Doubao 2.0 (claims to match GPT-5.2 / Gemini 3 Pro level reasoning and multi-step tasks). Their video gen model Seedance 2.0 went viral for high-quality deepfakes and creative uses, sparking huge youth/creator interest.
  • Zhipu AI → Dropped GLM-5 (open weights, strong in coding, long tasks, agent capabilities; one of the highest open-weight intelligence scores).
  • MiniMax → M2.5 and M2.5 Lightning (near state-of-the-art at ~1/20th the cost of top Western models like Claude Opus; very strong on coding/agent benchmarks).
  • Kuaishou → Kling 3.0 (advanced AI video generation).
  • Moonshot AI → Kimi K2.5 (very close to top proprietary models at 1/7th the price; excellent reasoning).
  • DeepSeek → Widely expected to drop V4 soon (focused on coding, potentially 1M+ context, efficient MoE architecture). They’ve been the pace-setter since early 2025.

Many of these are open-weight or open-source, leading to Alibaba’s Qwen family overtaking Meta’s Llama in cumulative Hugging Face downloads.

Broader Themes Right Now

  • Low-cost + open ecosystems → China is winning on price/performance and rapid iteration. Models often cost 5–20× less than Western equivalents while matching or nearing performance in many areas.
  • Two different races → Analysts say the US focuses on perfecting frontier models (bigger, more compute-heavy), while China emphasizes adoption — deploying cheap, efficient AI at massive scale in manufacturing, robotics, consumer apps, and the real economy.
  • Physical & embodied AI → Huge push here. Robotics demos (backflips, kung fu with nunchucks synced across many bots on live TV) show fast progress in “physical intelligence.” Alibaba’s RynnBrain targets robotics directly.
  • Other notable advances → In-orbit AI computing constellation (“Three-Body”) successfully tested (running LLMs on satellites for low-latency edge processing). Military applications (e.g., bio-inspired drone swarms using hawk/wolf behaviors) are advancing rapidly.
  • Challenges & realism → Some top Chinese AI leaders (e.g., Alibaba’s Qwen lead) estimate <20% chance of fully overtaking US frontier models in 3–5 years due to compute gaps and chip sanctions. But open collaboration and talent pipelines are closing the gap fast in many practical areas.

Overall, February 2026 feels like China’s AI industry hitting a coordinated sprint — not just catching up, but pulling ahead in accessible, deployable, cost-effective AI that reaches everyday users, creators, and industries quickly. The US still leads in raw frontier capability and monetization scale, but the gap is shrinking noticeably in deployment and iteration speed.

Gemini’s review included the following:

The report’s observation about the “Two Different Races” is the most insightful part:

• US Strategy: Scaling laws for maximum “Frontier Intelligence.”

• China Strategy: Scaling for “Deployment Efficiency.” By making models like MiniMax M2.5 and Kimi K2.5 available at a fraction of the cost ($0.15–$0.60 per 1M tokens), China is prioritizing the “AI Agent” economy, where reliability and low cost per task matter more than raw benchmark scores.

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Business China

Innovations from the Automotive Sector

I’ve been listening to the latest podcast from Dwarfish Patel in which he’s interviewing Arthur Kroeber (“China’s Manufacturing Dominance: State Directives & Ruthless Competition“).

One of the topics discussed is how “China recognized that pretty much every other country that had gotten rich had done so in large part by building up an automotive industry that then served as the mechanism for creating innovations in other sectors. … They said, “We have to have a big auto industry. This is one of the key industries that we have to support.””

Kroeber goes on to describe how China opened up to enabling 50/50 joint ventures between Chinese auto companies and foreign auto manufacturers.

While that worked initially, eventually it became clear that to really enable globally competitive auto manufacturing in China there had to be another solution.

That solution was allowing Tesla to come into China in 2018 and build a Gigafactory in Shanghai. In so doing, China allowed a globally competitive auto manfacturer (Tesla) to effectively compete with local Chinese companies and, in so doing, create the need for those local Chinese companies to compete much more effectively with a global player like Tesla.

It’s a fascinating story. One of the other discussions in the early part of the interview involves how the U.S. might consider doing that in reverse – allowing Chinese companies to come into the U.S. market and through competition educate American companies so that they improve their globally competitive position. Politically impossible in the current climate – but an obvious idea based upon the Chinese experience.

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Black and White China Monochrome Photography Nik Software Nikon Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Nikon D600 San Francisco/California

Armored Kneeling Archer – China’s Terracotta Warriors

Armored Kneeling Archer - San Francisco - 2013

Here’s another image from the exhibition of China’s Terracotta Warriors now underway at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.

This image required a bit more work. One of the challenges of shooting images of the warriors as they’re displayed is the combination of lighting and reflections – which bring extra “stuff” into the images.

Plus, when we were there, it was really crowded inside the darkened exhibition gallery. Lots of folks moving around – and bumping into each other – a challenging photographic venue for sure!

But the gallery that the Asian Art Museum created for the warriors is really is superb in terms of how the terracotta warriors are placed and, in particular, how they’re lit.

So, to deal with the issues in the image, I did a quick selection in Photoshop to isolate the warrior from extraneous background elements. I then faded those elements into the background while adding some contrast to the warrior.

Then we made a trip into Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 to do two steps: bring out more detail and add a subtle bit of glamour glow.

Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 was used for the conversion to monochrome – adding a bit of structure to the midtones and highlights while removing structure from the shadows. A bit of soft contrast adjustment helped with lighting.

A quick pass with Doug Kaye’s Warm Black action helped tone the image just ever so slightly.

For the final sharpening step, I used the Sharpen 2013 action included in the latest version of Dan Margulis’ Picture Postcard Workflow panel in Photoshop.

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Black and White China Monochrome Photography Nik Software Nikon Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Nikon D600 San Francisco/California

China’s Terracotta Warriors

Driver - San Francisco - 2013

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is currently featuring a beautiful exhibition of China’s Terracotta Warriors.

Here’s an image from a recent visit – of a horse carriage driver. He’s out in the lobby – before you get into one of the three galleries with the other warriors and related sculptures.

This image was shot handheld with my Nikon D600 and post-processed in Photoshop CS6 along with Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

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China

To China

Tim Bajarin writes about his recent visit to China – after a nine year absence.

The pace of change in China is so stunning, that nothing would surprise me about China anymore.

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Business China

Immelt on China

Business Week has a great story about the Immelt revolution underway inside GE. In a sidebar Q&A interview, CEO Jeff Immelt discusses China:

China is really about infrastructure. There will be tremendous investments made in infrastructure, health care, energy, water, water, security. GE can approach China as one company and form a company-to-country relationship that’s bigger than any of the pieces.

We’re getting more comfortable with the rule of law. We’ve been careful so far. Our investments only trail our ability to understand what the rules are going to be. When I go there today, there’s a tremendous focus on the financial system. They’ve got external consultants working on it. China is not a slam dunk. But it’s right in GE’s sweet spot, so we’ve got to play and play big.

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China

The Dragon Awakes

Dean Calbreath writes in the San Diego Union-Tribune about China, the fastest growing economy in the world.

Some economists predict that by 2015, China will have enough spending power to become the world’s primary engine of economic growth, unseating the United States, which has held that role since the end of World War II. By 2040 – and perhaps much sooner – China may have a greater gross domestic product than the United States, giving it the world’s No. 1 economy. It now ranks at No. 3.

The newspaper will also be running articles on China tomorrow and Tuesday.

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China Film Travel

China

My photo album from my recent trip to Shanghai and Beijing is now available.

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China Travel

Shanghai Sky

Just came across an article in the Los Angeles Times from two weeks ago by Christopher Hawthorne about Shanghai.

There is no view in the world quite like it. The skylines of Hong Kong and Rio may be perched on the edge of more dramatic natural locations. European capitals may have deeper collections of architectural masterpieces. But only in Shanghai can you see unfettered 21st century ambition facing off as dramatically against the early 20th century version.

Hawthorne goes on to describe having dinner at a private club called the Yong Foo Elite — coincidentally, it’s where we had dinner in Shanghai on March 1st.

The club fills an entire compound, really, centered on a 1930s villa that once held the British Consulate. The interior has been impeccably restored, its cracked, dark-stained wood now gleaming and the central garden beautifully landscaped. But what makes it pitch perfect is the effortless way it mixes elements of Western and Eastern design: Chinese lanterns, for example, hanging from a magnolia tree and illuminating the neoclassical details of the villa’s facade.

The club is a wonderful setting for a traditional Shanghai dinner — but watch out for the maotai!

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China

Changing China

The BBC’s web site is running a special series this week titled “Changing China“.