Inside China's Real Tech Scene: Its AI And Green Tech Ambitions - Free Websites, Share News And Posts Publicly

Good morning.

Depending on who you ask, Chinese technological breakthroughs can elicit extreme responses. Giant leap for mankind – or ambitious global dominance? State-of-the-art, or third-rate facsimile?

In a 2-part Insight special, I travelled to China to see how two important areas of tech – artificial intelligence and clean energy – are evolving in the country.

The Chinese government has prioritised AI as a strategic technology, a key pillar of China’s global power ambitions. The weight and considerable resources of the government has been poured into AI development.

In Beijing, I got hands-on with Ernie Bot, China’s answer to ChatGPT, created by tech giant Baidu. Ernie Bot accompanied me on my travels, answering questions I had about China along the way.

So, does Ernie Bot rival ChatGPT? Well, not quite. My interactions with Ernie weren’t as robust or instructive as with ChatGPT. That was my experience with AI across my journey – it’s widely popular, but Chinese tech hasn’t quite caught up to American iterations yet.

Though you get a sense that it could be a matter of time.

But one area where the Chinese are undisputed leaders is in clean technology. The country occupies about three quarters of the global market in solar and wind energy equipment.

I visited an impressive solar mirror plant, which stretched almost 8-square-km in the Gobi Desert. I got up close to a prototype nuclear fusion reactor.

The results of the decade-long clean energy push are everywhere in China – from Tier One cities like Beijing, to the most remote of villages.

Join me on my three-week-long, eye-opening journey across China, where I see what the real Chinese tech scene is like.

Genevieve Woo

Senior Editor, Insight