A new piece from me on @NYMag is out today. It is the second installment in a reporting trilogy I’m calling “AI and the Chinese society.” Earlier this year, I visited China’s largest get-rich-with-AI company, which sells AI courses for profits. It has more than 80,000 paying members. Its meeting rooms have names like “Apostle of the Method” and “Evangelist.” Their membership system resembles a pyramid scheme. I was greeted by Mr. Tree, an in-house influencer and AI educator whose social media bio promises to “search for 100 business answers in the age of AI”—an echo of Beijing’s “AI Plus” plan. The company felt like a prosperity-gospel church, and salvation meant adopting AI as fast as you can. In Liangzhu, China’s vibe-coding capital, which I wrote about, young people give one another AI lessons for free in their living rooms. I also met Xiaokai, a 25-year-old filmmaker who became a pro on AI video generation through free classes, built a business earning several million yuan in profit, and now walks red carpets in Shanghai and Beijing. To understand this AI education craze, I found peoples’ fear of being left behind, their religious faith in education, and millions of ordinary people trying to find a place for themselves in a AI future Beijing is summoning on behalf of everyone. ----- Earlier this week, @KaiserKuo and I chatted about this trilogy on the great @SinicaPodcast in detail and some behind-the-scenes stories. You can listen to it now (links in the comments)! Also. Many thanks to my wonderful editor, Joy Shan; my fact-checker, Jessica Suriano; and some friends who read the draft and offered feedback.

My first piece for @NewYorker is out today! As Xi Jinping lands in DC to start his state visit, you'll hear a lot about the US-China AI race. I'd like to tell a complementary AI story. This past May, a few days after Trump visited Beijing, I went to the town people call China's vibe-coding capital, Liangzhu. There, you learn that China's AI scene is not monolithic. It's also full of contrarians, cool vibe coders, spiritual seekers, and people who love AI but refuse to join the 996 grind. Liangzhu is on the edge of Hangzhou. I hung out with a group of anti-mainstream builders who use AI to make whimsical apps for fortune-telling, mental well-being, and creativity. Some of them run their lives entirely by bazi astrology (their founder almost became a Taoist monk). They meet on "Crazy Thursday" to vibe-code together. Rent is cheap, so they can get a bigger place with a living room to have friends over (unthinkable in Beijing or Shenzhen). In Liangzhu, they want to use AI to forge their own future. It’s a ground-level story—less about model capabilities, hyperscalers, or AI policy, and more about how people in China are using AI, and the human stories behind it.