China Decode: China's Bid for AI Dominance, and Chinese Food Trends (ft. @BlondieinChina)

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**Alice Han** (1:12)
It seems like China is saying, hey, we're not like America when it comes to AI. We're going to be open weight, open source. We're invested in trying to have multilateral agreement about brain working and we care about making sure that humans are always in control, as opposed to this AGI narrative that you see a lot in Silicon Valley.
Welcome to China Decode. I'm Alice Han.

**James Kynge** (1:42)
And I'm James Kynge.

**Alice Han** (1:43)
In today's episode of China Decode, we're discussing China's aims for more AI diplomacy around the world. Chinese mathematicians win a prestigious international award, and Amy Lyons, aka Blondie in China, shares the latest in Chinese food and hospitality trends. That's all coming up, but first, let's do a very quick check in with how the markets are starting the week in China. On Monday, markets saw gains with the Shanghai Composite and the CSI 300 both up 1.15 percent, and the Shenzhen compoted up 2.7 percent. Chinese memory chip maker CXMT soared 466 percent on its Shanghai style market debut Monday, instantly becoming China's most valuable listed company at roughly 3.3 trillion renminbi, that is nearly 500 billion US dollars. All right, let's get right into it. At a recent speech at the World AI Conference in Shanghai, President Xi Jinping unveiled his vision for the future of AI led by China. He focused on the importance of free open source AI models and training, as well as a need to open up developing countries to Chinese AI models. Now, these developing countries might be left behind by the expensive US systems like OpenAI and Anthropic. The strategy of targeting the global south could be China's secret strategy and weapon in becoming the global leader in AI technology. All right, James, I thought that Xi's speech was a must read. This is such an important speech from President Xi. He doesn't make them often, but when he does, you have to listen.
At this AI conference, he basically delivered this speech in which he said that China needs to be a leader, particularly in the open source models, and that the global south has a role in being part of that ecosystem.
I sent this speech to many of my friends, I have to admit, in Silicon Valley because I really believe that this speech alone says a lot about China's AI strategy.
Oftentimes, in closed systems, it really pays to go to the source of what the leadership is thinking. Here, we're getting a very good clue into how Xi and the leadership are thinking about AI. How are you seeing this play out in China, and is it as politicized as it seems to be in the US?

**James Kynge** (4:13)
I would just like to concur with what you said about the importance of this event. This speech by Xi Jinping at the AI conference really was vital.
If you ask me, it's partly to do with the open-source question that you mentioned, but it's much bigger than that. Here, we have China's new plan for artificial intelligence and disseminating artificial intelligence around the world. And to me, this illuminates a crucial part of China's even bigger plan to create a new world order, or maybe not create a new world order, but guide certain technologies and certain trends towards the creation of a new world order. That might be a more accurate way of putting it. And in a nutshell, my sense of this plan is that it is to appeal to the global south. The global south, of course, has about 130 countries in it. It's by far the biggest part of the world. And as you mentioned, Alice, Chinese AI is largely open source, almost exclusively open source. So it can be downloaded by anyone, anywhere in the world and purposed for their own particular needs.