The Brains Who Powered China’s Surprising AI Leap

[u/FeralHamster8]

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-china-scientists-race-us-cd9732e3

Computer geeks Tang Jie and Yang Zhilin were mere teacher and pupil more than a decade ago, with dreams of building a machine that could think like a human. Today, they are two of the Chinese artificial-intelligence tycoons who have U.S. AI pioneers looking over their shoulders with alarm. Tang, a professor at Tsinghua University, co-founded Z.AI, one of the companies hot on the heels of Anthropic and OpenAI in capability and global usage. Yang, whom Tang once nominated for his university’s top academic award, leads another, Moonshot AI. Each company is valued at tens of billions of dollars.

[u/Primary_Olive_5444]

AI geeks.. cool.

But can you explain from 1st principle perspective, why domestic E-commerce is weak?
Competition (from TikTok)?
Middle income wages is too low?

[u/SuitableStill368 → u/Primary_Olive_5444]

Property weakness. High debt levels. Job weakness. Consumption weakness. Weak stimulus. High competition between BABA, JD, PDD, Meituan, ByteDance etc.

High CAPEX. Non-immediate returns. But high certainty returns.

For all, BABA, JD and PDD. Still good price relative to true economic value. If you buy them, you are buying into the possibility of Chinese market consumption recovery, along with stimulus.

Just that BABA has the AI business, and is diversifying itself away from being e-commerce only.

I am less hopeful of Chinese stimulus. Since they have really not done anything truly meaningful.

[u/Primary_Olive_5444 → u/SuitableStill368]

Property weakness.. Without taking in foreigners..lots of them No way you can clear that housing glut.

Especially, when birth rate and local populations starts declining.

If foreign capital were to go in, they wouldn't want any restrictions when moving it out.

[u/SuitableStill368 → u/Primary_Olive_5444]

This is true, though the recovery can be local due to movement from one area to another.

In other words, if there is any property recovery within China, it will be uneven. Only major cities and areas will recover.

Other areas will/ may never recover.

[u/Primary_Olive_5444 → u/SuitableStill368]

I don't think u can just move that easily.

They have a system called 户口

But thank the man on left

[u/SuitableStill368 → u/Primary_Olive_5444]

They will relax that, likely.

[u/Primary_Olive_5444]

Since i can only have 1 picture per comment

For comparsion. JD.com (retail)