How do Chinese AI bots stack up against ChatGPT? We put them to the test

The heat is on as China's tech giants step up their video game after DeepSeek's success.

Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max chatbot, Chinese start-up DeepSeek and OpenAI's ChatGPT. (Photos: Reuters/Dado Ruvic, AFP/Sebastien Bozon)

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Bong Xin Ying

Lakeisha Leo

WHAT'S BEHIND CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the country into a tech superpower has actually long been President Xi Jinping's objective and China has its sights on ending up being the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "tactically essential" and its foray into the field has actually been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an affiliated scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

Private and public financial investments in Chinese AI accelerated after ChatGPT took off in 2022 and showed guarantees of real-world business applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that truly "urged" the idea that smaller like start-up companies could have functions to play in AI research and developments, he adds.

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The "emphasis on expense benefit" is an unique function of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and reasoning costs - the expenses of using a trained model to draw conclusions from brand-new data.

2025 could also see the introduction of more Chinese AI models taking on sophisticated reasoning tasks.

"We could see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to artificial basic intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete methods to commercialise their designs and integrate them with scientific research," Chen included.

AGI describes a system with intelligence on par with human abilities.

Chinese AI companies are moving quickly, experts say, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile