Beijing’s tech minister flew to a G20 meeting on US soil to call for AI “cooperation, not rivalry” — three weeks before the summit. The message is aimed at the watching world. And the gap between the words and China’s own hardening is the real story.
China just made its civilian AI industry a legal military reserve. The first defence-mobilisation law revision in 16 years turns AI, drones, and data into wartime assets on demand — weeks before the Trump-Xi summit.
America’s AI security scares were supposed to prove open models are too dangerous. Instead they strengthened China’s hand — because a fearful world values self-custody over a vendor’s promise of safety. The Trump-Xi summit is the reckoning.
The weights are still free to download — but no longer free to build a fortune on. Alibaba and Moonshot now want a share of your revenue. China’s open-source giants are quietly rebuilding “free” into a royalty business.
For a year, China’s weapon was radically cheap AI. Now DeepSeek charges peak-hour rates like an Uber at rush hour — up 355%. The monetisation reckoning watchchina.ai predicted has quietly begun.
Unitree soared 460%, then crashed 45% — $30 billion gone in days. The robots are real, but the valuation was fantasy. watchchina.ai on the gap between China’s robot demonstrations and actual deployment.