China is betting on a real-world use of AI to challenge U.S. control

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SHANGHAI - As the United States and China vie for control over the future of artificial intelligence, Beijing has embarked on an all-out drive to transform the technology from a remote concept to a newfangled reality, with applications on factory floors and in hospitals and government offices.
China does not have access to the most advanced chips required to power cutting-edge models due to restrictions from Washington and is still largely playing catch-up with Silicon Valley giants like OpenAI. But experts say Beijing is pursuing an alternative playbook in an attempt to bridge the gap: aggressively pushing for the adoption of AI across the government and private sector. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
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'In China, there's definitely stronger government support for applications and a clear mandate from the central government to diffuse the technology through society,' said Scott Singer, an expert on China's AI sector at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. By contrast, the U.S. has been more focused on developing the most advanced AI models while 'the application layer has been totally ignored,' he said.
China's push was on full display in Shanghai at its World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which ran until Tuesday. Themed 'Global Solidarity in the AI Era,' the expo is one part of Beijing's bid to establish itself as a responsible AI leader for the international community. This pitch was bolstered by the presence of international heavyweights like Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned AI researcher often called the 'Godfather of AI.'
During the event, Beijing announced an international organization for AI regulation and a 13-point action plan aimed at fostering global cooperation to ensure the technology's beneficial and responsible development.
'China attaches great importance to global AI governance,' Li Qiang, China's premier, said at the opening ceremony on Saturday.
It 'is willing to share its AI development experience and technological products to help countries around the world - especially those in the Global South,' he said, according to an official readout.
Just last week, President Donald Trump announced a competing plan in a bid to boost American AI competitiveness by reducing regulation and promoting global exports of U.S. AI technology.
Washington has moved in recent years to restrict China's access to chips necessary for AI development, in part due to concerns about potential military applications of such models and degrading U.S. tech leadership.
The Trump administration's approach to chip policy, however, has been mixed. Earlier this month, the White House reversed a previous ban on specific AI chips made by U.S. tech giant Nvidia being exported to China. This shift occurred amid trade negotiations between the world's two largest economies, which have been locked in an escalating tariff and export control war since Trump returned to the Oval Office earlier this year.
There was nothing but excitement about AI in the vast expo center in Shanghai's skyscraper-rich Pudong district, where crowds entered gates controlled by facial recognition. Inside, thousands of attendees listened to panels stacked with Chinese government officials, entrepreneurs and international researchers, or watched demonstrations on using AI to create video games, control robotic movements and respond in real time to conversations via smartglasses.
Chinese giants like Huawei and Alibaba and newer Chinese tech darlings like Unitree Robotics were there. DeepSeek was not present, but its name was spoken everywhere.
The Hangzhou-based upstart has been at the forefront of Beijing's attempt to push the government use of AI since it released a chatbot model in January, prompting a global craze and driving home China's rapid AI advances.
DeepSeek has been put to work over the last six months on a wide variety of government tasks.
Procurement documents show military hospitals in Shaanxi and Guangxi provinces specifically requesting DeepSeek to build online consultation and health record systems. Local government websites describe state organs using DeepSeek for things like diverting calls from the public and streamlining police work.
DeepSeek helps 'quickly discover case clues and predict crime trends,' which 'greatly improves the accuracy and timeliness of crime fighting,' a city government in China's Inner Mongolia region explained in a February social media post.
Anti-corruption investigations - long a priority for Chinese leader Xi Jinping - are another frequent DeepSeek application, in which models are deployed to comb through dry spreadsheets to find suspicious irregularities. In April, China's main anti-graft agency even included a book called 'Efficiently Using DeepSeek' on its official book recommendation list.
China's new AI action plan underscores this push, declaring that the 'public sector should take the lead in deploying applications' by embedding AI in education, transportation and health care. It also emphasizes a mandate to use AI 'to empower the real economy' and praises open-source models - which are more easily shared - as an egalitarian method of AI development.
Alfred Wu, an expert on China's public governance at the National University of Singapore, said Beijing has disseminated a 'top-down' directive to local governments to use AI.
This is motivated, Wu said, by a desire to improve China's AI prowess amid a fierce rivalry with Washington by providing models access to vast stores of government data.
But not everyone is convinced that China has the winning hand, even as it attempts to push AI application nationwide.
For one, China's sluggish economy will impact the AI industry's ability to grow and access funding, said Singer, who was attending the conference. Beijing has struggled to manage persistent deflation and a property crisis, which has taken a toll on the finances of many families across the country.
'So much of China's AI policy is shaped by the state of the economy. The economy has been struggling for a few years now, and applications are one way of catalyzing much-needed growth,' he said. 'The venture capital ecosystem in AI in China has gone dry.'
Others point out that local governments trumpeting their usage of DeepSeek is more about signaling than real technology uptake.
Shen Yang, a professor at Tsinghua University's school of artificial intelligence, said DeepSeek is not being used at scale in anti-corruption work, for example, because the cases involve sensitive information and deploying new tools in these investigations requires long and complex approval processes.
He also pointed out that AI is still a developing technology with lots of kinks. 'AI hallucinations still exist,' he said, using a term for the technology's generation of false or misleading information. 'If it's wrong, who takes responsibility?'
These concerns, however, felt far away in the expo's humming hallways.
At one booth, Carter Hou, the co-founder of Halliday, a smartglasses company, explained how the lenses project a tiny black screen at the top of a user's field of vision. The screen can provide translation, recordings and summaries of any conversation, and even deploy 'proactive AI,' which anticipates questions based on a user's interactions and provides information preemptively.
'For example, if you ask me a difficult question that is fact related,' Hou said, wearing the trendy black frames, 'all I need to do is look at it and use that information and pretend I'm a very knowledgeable person.'
Asked about the event's geopolitical backdrop, Hou said he was eager to steer clear of diplomatic third rails.
'People talk a lot about the differences between the United States and China,' he said. 'But I try to stay out of it as much as possible, because all we want to do is just to build good products for our customers. That's what we think is most important.'
Kiki Lei, a Shanghai resident who started an AI video company and attended the conference on Sunday, seemed to agree with this goal. She said that Chinese AI products are easier to use than U.S. products because companies here really 'know how to create new applications' and excel at catering to, and learning from, the large pool of Chinese technology users.
Robots, perhaps the most obvious application of AI in the real world, were everywhere at the conference - on model factory floors and in convenience stores retrieving soda cans, shaking disbelieving kids' hands, or just roaming the packed halls.
At the booth for ModelBest, another Beijing-based AI start-up, a young student from China's prestigious Tsinghua University, who was interning at the company, demonstrated how a robot could engage with its surroundings - and charm its human interlocutors.
Looking directly at the student, the robot described his nondescript clothing. 'The outfit is both stylish and elegant,' the robot continued. 'You have a confident and friendly demeanor, which makes you very attractive.'
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Pei-Lin Wu in Taiwan contributed to this report.
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Video: Robots ruled at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, where China displayed its latest tech and AI innovation. Washington Post China correspondent Katrina Northrop reported from the event on July 26.(c) 2025 , The Washington Post
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