In 2019, a Chinese developer created a GitHub repository, the most important social network for programmers worldwide, called “996.ICU”. The code name denounced the exploitative labor conditions of Chinese tech companies: if you work 996, from 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week, you will end up in the ICU. The repository went viral, with more and more Chinese programmers supporting it and creating blacklists of companies that applied the 996, such as Alibaba, Huawei or Tencent. Chinese tech companies and the government became alerted, but the wave was difficult to stop: GitHub, a large open-source library, is the only major Western social network that is not censored in China. The 996 became a major national debate. Two years later, this spontaneous labor movement managed to get the Chinese government and courts to declare these working conditions illegal.In recent years, there has been much talk about open Chinese AI models. The most famous was Deepseek, but Qwen, Manus, or Kimi are also well known in the programming community. Contrary to the closed and private AI of American tech companies, Chinese companies have opted for open, free, and highly modifiable models. This has made them popular among startups or developing countries. Right now, open Chinese AI models are the only ones that can rival the American ones. They have become one of China's most cutting-edge technological sectors, and a great source of national pride.The technological success of China is often explained through state subsidies or the long-term plans of the Communist Party. However, as analyst Kevin Xu explains, the Chinese AI models that are now so successful have not emerged from government initiatives, but from a spontaneous bottom-up movement: the social mass of Chinese open-source programmers who launched the campaign against 996 is the same one that has created the AI models that fascinate the world.
Open source
The government has recently joined the Chinese open-source wave, but it had been organically built by the country's programmers for decades. In fact, until a few years ago, open source was not considered a strategic technological sector by the State. Everything changed with the American sanctions against Huawei: the Chinese government saw how using free software could protect it against external technological coercions. Open source became a national priority: besides the AI sector, Huawei, Baidu, and BYD have created open software for smartphones, autonomous cars, or electric vehicles.
The Communist Party now considers open AI a strategic asset, for protection and influence towards the world. This political attention, however, is a double-edged sword. State support can boost Chinese AI with more resources. At the same time, more state presence can also evolve into more control over the sector, which could erode the innovative and organic dynamism responsible for the great triumphs of Chinese AI.
