People take photos of a robot at a release conference of new product with cutting-edge technology held in North China's Xiong'an New Area Zhongguancun (ZGC) Science Park, Hebei Province, on February 25, 2025. At the event, 10 technology companies from across China demonstrated their latest innovations. Photo: VCG
Amid another wave of high-tech frenzy that began this year, with the rise to fame of the likes of the DeepSeek chatbot and the UniTree humanoid robot, multiple national lawmakers and political advisors from various high-tech fields have noted the importance of applying high-tech in real-life industries and scenarios.
National lawmakers and political advisors have expounded on the importance of scale as high-tech products light up China's tech landscape in 2025.
"We will advance the integrated and clustered development of strategic emerging industries, carry out demonstration initiatives on the large-scale application of new technologies, products, and scenarios...," according to the 2025 Government Work Report.
Qi Yuqin, a deputy to the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) and a frontline worker with Ordos Yuansheng Photoelectric Co in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, told the Global Times that she believes it is only when technological breakthroughs and industrial demand collide in specific scenarios and ignite a "chemical reaction," can new quality productive forces truly become the core engine of high-quality development.
Qi's company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese display panel giant BOE Technology, a global leader in the semiconductor display industry.
Wang Lizong, a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the president of the Guangdong High-tech Industry Chamber of Commerce, told the Global Times on Tuesday that new quality productive forces, such as the low-altitude economy, will definitely have development potential with new application scenarios including low-altitude flights, low-altitude logistics and low-altitude drones, providing definite growth impetus to the economy.
"However, in the current situation, the market is not particularly large and such technologies still belong to sort of a niche segment, and there needs to be more opening-up and more application scenarios," Wang said. "I call for the rise of Chinese tech products that can perform roles such as mobile phones, TV sets and home appliances - in short, people's tech - to ignite the next wave of consumption."
Wang, from Shenzhen - home to Chinese tech giant Huawei and Tencent as well as electric champion BYD - recently drew media attention with his response to the six Hangzhou-based start-ups including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek and video game developer Game Science, known as the "six little dragons" by stating that Chinese tech hub Shenzhen has "a bunch of dragons."
China is aiming to seize the opportunities presented by AI breakthroughs, leveraging China's strengths in digital technology, manufacturing and market scale to drive the widespread adoption of AI models across industries and households, Chen Changsheng, a member of the Government Work Report Drafting Team and deputy director of the State Council Research Office, said last week at a press briefing held to explain the Government Work Report.
Zhou Mi, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Tuesday that he expects pilot programs to gradually drive the mass application of emerging technologies.
"For innovative emerging industries, China has profound industrial capacity on the supply side to enable it to scale up, and it also has huge demand, for instance, AI-plus mobile phones will likely give a whole new dimension to the way we use our phones," Zhou said. "China has strengths in these aspects, and the government will need to guide the development and provide the environment to allow the fusion of tech and market."
Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times on Tuesday that China's technological breakthroughs, regardless of the multi-year US-led tech crackdown, will create even greater contributions to the world in the future.
DeepSeek, with its open source, has allowed a great many developing countries to enjoy the benefits of high-tech products and to improve their quality of life, Wang said. "For the past 20 years, China has been doing this: initially, products like TVs and home appliances were expensive, but after China started producing them, prices dropped. This trend later extended to automobiles and now to AI products. Besides AI products and robots, China will be offering a bunch of other products to the world."
