China’s visa uproar is part of a DeepSeek illusion

YOU MIGHT HAVE thought Beijing’s effort to attract global STEM talent would fire up legions of patriotic keyboard warriors eager to celebrate America’s relative decline.

- JULIANA LIU Bloomberg

Instead, the launch of a new work visa has sparked an online furore that highlights the soft underbelly of China’s much-vaunted industrial policy.

The decade-long Made in China campaign to ensure the country can compete with the best of the West in 10 key industries—including robotics, electric vehicles and pharmaceuticals—has been largely successful. The technical prowess, exemplified by January’s DeepSeek moment, has fired up the stock market. But it’s not been enough to fill the gap left by the collapse of the property sector, which once accounted for as much as 32% of the economy. Consumer pessimism was on display last week when the country wrapped up an eight-day holiday break. Fresh data suggest travelers were pinching their pennies. Spending was subdued, road trips replaced flights, and box-office sales missed expectations, according to Bloomberg News.

Against this backdrop, it wasn’t an ideal time to debut the Kvisa—what some have called China’s equivalent of the H-1B. For now, details are still scant, though it comes as part of Beijing’s post-pandemic moves to loosen restrictions on dozens of countries to revitalise travel and consumption.