Reporting from
the front lines of China's AI industry.
Independent writing on the labs, the people, and the policy shaping AI in China. Leave your email and I'll send one new piece a week.
Subscribe
One email a week. New writing on China's AI industry. Unsubscribe anytime.
Recent articles
- August 7, 2026
ByteDance Founder's Rare Directive: No Distillation, Even at the Cost of Falling Behind
ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming rejects AI distillation from rivals, accepting temporary defeat for long-term breakthroughs. Policy survived three internal battles since 2023.
- August 3, 2026
The Distillation Storm: Inside China's LLM Distillation Controversy
Between January and July 2026, a series of events swept through China's LLM industry — from encrypted chain-of-thought extraction, to Anthropic's public accusations, to benchmark controversies. This article cross-references an insider account with public reporting.
- July 26, 2026
DeepSeek's Leaked Investor Meeting Halted a $1.4 Billion Funding Round
A closed-door meeting in May 2026 leaked in July. Bloomberg reports the second funding round is paused. What Liang Wenfeng actually said — on pricing, open source, AGI, talent, and the compute gap with America.