Chinese AI’s secret to withstanding the trade war

WHILE the world has been caught up in a whirlwind of tariff news out of Washington, it has been easy to miss a separate barrage of artificial intelligence announcements from China.

Alibaba Group released a new open-source model for generating videos, so-called Little Dragon Zhipu AI filed early paperwork for an initial public offering as early as this year, and DeepSeek has been deployed everywhere from hospitals to local governments. The list goes on.

It’s impossible to overstate the domestic exuberance spurred by DeepSeek, which rattled the world earlier this year and proved that China can compete toe-to-toe with Silicon Valley. The Hangzhou-based startup breathed new vitality into the country’s AI sector. Although President Donald Trump’s trade war has brought turmoil to global markets, the hits won’t knock China’s AI development off-course.