With ever-growing interests in products and services of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese young people are increasingly using this emerging technology to improve the quality of life, productivity and entertainment experience.
In Shanghai, an "AI canteen" is bustling with diners at meal time, while its kitchen has no cook. Its intelligent cooking system and robotic arms do the work of frying, baking, steaming, or boiling raw ingredients delivered from a central kitchen according to customers' orders. Robotic arms then pack the dishes and adjust the temperature for dine-in or takeaway.
With over 1,000 dishes of Chinese cuisines available, the "robot chefs" occupy smaller space and have unified operating standards, greatly helping the canteen reduce cost and increase service efficiency. The stable food taste and relatively low prices have made the restaurant popular among nearby residents and office workers.
"We have added a 'brain' [to the canteen], which plays the function of big data computation. For example, we can analyze the dining orders given by diners from a block in this canteen and accurately calculate what the elderly people or white-collar workers in this block prefer, like how much oil, salt and sugar are used in cooking," said Kong Zhai, vice president of an e-commerce company in Shanghai.
Young people are also keen on using AI to improve their work efficiency. Since she started using AI two or three years ago, Du Ying as a programmer has been as if her "fast forward button" were pressed at. Now she can generate 3D digital people in tens of seconds, finish PPT in one minute, and make a static website in five minutes. She also uses AI to write basic code, make work plans and itineraries, and practices oral English with AI.
"AI can turn texts into graphs in just 30 seconds. Let me show you and demonstrate. Once I type the text directly into it, magically, different kinds of charts will quickly come out in 30 seconds. It may take me several hours to draw just one of these diagrams, which may not be as good as the one generated by AI," Du said.
Data from Chinese e-commerce platform Tmall show that the main force of smart AI consumption is people aged 25 to 40. In the past few years, AI has been changing Chinese people's life at home. The size of China's smart furniture market has maintained double-digit growth for five consecutive years, and is expected to exceed 830 billion yuan, or 113.3 billion U.S. dollars, in 2025.
"It [AI] will continue to expand domestic demand and stimulate new areas of consumption growth, so as to drive overall consumption upgrades. It will foster a new mode of digital economic development that is powered by AI applications in different scenarios, and promote the coordinated development of digital industries and the digital transformation of traditional industries, creating more job opportunities and greater value," said Wang Luyao, associate professor at the School of Economics and Management of the Communication University of China.
Young Chinese keen on AI consumption
Young Chinese keen on AI consumption
China will firmly fight against economic hegemony, advocate justice, and stick to the right path against the sweeping tariffs by the United States, and will open ever wider to the world no matter how the international situation changes, according to a commentary of The Real Point published on Sunday.
An edited English version of the commentary is as follows:
In response to the U.S. imposition of "reciprocal tariffs" on all trading partners, China issued the Chinese Governments Position on Opposing U.S. Abuse of Tariffs on Saturday, after taking a series of countermeasures.
The thousand-word document pointed out that the United States uses tariffs as a weapon to exert extreme pressure and pursue its own selfish interests, which is a typical act of unilateralism, protectionism and economic bullying.
The paper also emphasized that China does not provoke trouble but is not afraid of trouble, and will continue to implement a high-level trade and investment liberalization and facilitation policy to share development opportunities and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results with countries around the world.
Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, told The Real Point that this position paper demonstrates China's high sense of responsibility to uphold fairness and justice without fear of power politics, which will be conducive to the efforts of the international community to pool together resultant forces and continue promoting economic globalization.
Meanwhile, China's determination to promote high-level opening-up has boosted the courage and confidence of other countries to fight against unilateral bullying and injected certainty into a changing and turbulent world, according to Li.
There are no winners in a trade war and there is no way out for protectionism. When the U.S. complains that the whole world is taking advantage of it, it deliberately distorts a fact that the U.S. is the biggest beneficiary of the world's free trade system since the end of World War II.
Since the establishment of diplomatic relations with China in 1979, the United States has long been reaping substantial profits from its economic and trade ties with the country. More than 70,000 American companies have invested and started businesses in China, and exports to China supported 930,000 jobs in the United States, which maintained a huge surplus in service trade in particular.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2023, the United States exported 46.72 billion U.S. dollars in services to China, and had a trade surplus of 26.57 billion U.S. dollars in services with China.
The Economist criticized the current U.S. trade policy for ignoring the unprecedented prosperity that globalization has brought to the United States.
The U.S. arbitrarily uses tariffs to blackmail other countries at will, attempting to sacrifice the interests of the whole world for U.S. hegemony. But any exertion of pressure and intimidation are useless to China.
This year, in the face of the continuous tariffs imposed by the United States, China has introduced a series of precise and effective measures, as one of the first countries taking countermeasures. The country's move is not only to safeguard its own sovereignty, security and development interests, but also to defend the multilateral trading system and international trade rules.
The world is not a jungle society, and everything must be fair and just. Development is a universal right of all countries in the world, not an exclusive right of a few countries.
The United States has unilaterally imposed tariffs on all its trading partners, violating the WTO's Most-Favored-Nation treatment principle and attempting to subvert the existing international economic and trade order. Its nature is to pursue "America first" and "America special" and deprive other countries of their legitimate right to development.
Over the past days, the European Union, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, Canada and other countries have been criticizing the United States.
China's position paper clearly states that "international affairs should be addressed through consultation, and the future of the world should be decided by all countries", reflecting the common aspirations of the international community and China's consistent position of speaking and doing fair things.
While the United States continues to build "high walls around a small yard" and erect tariff barriers, China is constantly "opening its doors" and "building bridges and roads" to bring more opportunities to the world.
On March 28, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with representatives of the international business community in Beijing and reiterated that China is determined to promote reform and opening up, China's door will only open wider, and China's policy of welcoming foreign investment has not changed and will not change.
The China Development Forum 2025, held in Beijing from March 23 to 24, attracted more than 80 representatives of multinational companies, among which American companies made up the largest proportion, reaching about one-third.
A report released by global management consulting firm Kearney shows that in the ranking of foreign direct investment confidence in the next three years, China has jumped from 7th to 3rd, and ranked first in the special ranking of emerging markets.
At a time when the world is in turmoil and the United States is abusively imposing tariffs, China's position paper sends a strong message to the world about maintaining the multilateral trading system and promoting economic globalization.
The world wants justice, not hegemony. This is China's clear declaration and the common voice of the international community.
China opposes hegemony, upholds right path against sweeping U.S. tariffs: commentary
