China's AI fever drives wider adoption across society, but is it mostly hype?

Excitement reflects real, pent-up market demand for the technology, says analyst

- Joyce ZK Lim

BEIJING - China has been gripped by a fresh wave of artificial intelligence (AI) fever, as home-grown sensation DeepSeek sparked a rush to adopt the technology that has seemingly spanned all corners of society.

That fervor permeated China's recently concluded parliamentary meetings in Beijing, where many delegates, suited bureaucrats and corporate honchos alike, were keen to signal they were embracing the sector.

"Artificial intelligence is the buzzword of this year's Two Sessions," observed Mr Wu Qing, who heads the country's securities regulatory body, referring to the meetings.

He was speaking at a press conference on March 6, at which officials said they would provide more funds and financing channels for tech and innovation, including a 1 trillion yuan (S$184.6 billion) venture capital guidance fund for cutting-edge sectors such as AI.

How much will China's AI frenzy help the country in its push for new drivers of growth to boost a flagging economy?

"China's generative AI adoption has undeniably hit full throttle, propelled by DeepSeek's recent breakthrough," said Ms Wei Sun, a principal analyst in AI at market research firm Counterpoint Research.

The start-up stunned the world in January with its open-source large language and reasoning models said to be comparable with the world's best - but developed at a fraction of the cost and without the most advanced chips.

"To be sure, the current wave of AI rush carries its share of hype," Ms Sun said. "But I think under this speculative frenzy lies genuine substance: the excitement reflects real, pent-up market demand."

Earlier in March, investment bank Goldman Sachs revised upwards its forecast of the economic value that China can reap from generative AI adoption, after noting the rapid development of the sector of late.