At the start of 2025, a groundbreaking development in artificial intelligence sent shockwaves across the globe.

A Chinese generative AI model, DeepSeq, has not only matched the performance of the world's top-tier AI systems, but has done so at a fraction of the cost. Even more remarkably, DeepSeq is open source, making its code accessible to everyone. The release of DeepSeq AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing.

This achievement has sparked a wave of reactions from the West, ranging from awe to introspection. While China continues to make staggering technological breakthroughs, Western media's portrayal of these advancements has taken a notable turn. A recent BBC report, for instance, drew thousands of satirical comments for its abrupt change in tone.

So what's behind DeepSix's global splash? Why are Western media narratives changing? And what does this mean for the information war that the West has long been waging? This week on Deep Dive, CGTN opinion editor Huang Jiyuan explores these questions and more. It's Thursday, February 20th.

So, this report from BBC had gone viral, partly because it lacked that infamous tagline, but at what cost? And many people just didn't expect this coming from the British media agency. And Ji Yuan, were you surprised by this report when you read this abrupt change in their tone?

Yeah, I was really, really surprised because I didn't come across this topic by myself. I was having dinner with a friend once and he told me that there's this BBC report coming out and it's quite amazing that it says nothing negative about it. Well, it said a little bit, but not, you know, the whole thing was quite positive. So I was like, you know, let me check that out. And so I went online and saw it.

And at first, I didn't know what to make of it because my assumption was that it's going to be negative. So I kept looking for that bit. You were waiting for that tagline. Yeah, I was waiting for that tagline saying something that China did something that's really evil or something like that. And I kept looking for it until...

The video finished. I was like, wow, it really said nothing about China. But I didn't really know what to make of it. So I went to the comment section of the video. That's the reaction from everybody. Yeah, the reaction from everybody. And basically, everybody was talking about it. The top comment, the most liked comment was this, that there is no at what cost line there. And it's really surprising. So I think everybody had the same kind of reaction to it.

Yeah, I think that was quite confusing for readers, viewers across the world. And many comments online, they are making sense of this broad change of tone and connecting it to the recent suspension of USAID funding. And people are suggesting that the reduced US influence

has led to this less anti-China propaganda. And is there any evidence to support this speculation? I mean, does BBC receive funding from USAID or other similar American agencies?

I think it's quite difficult to have a definitive answer at this point because I did some research. I mean, it's easy. I can see why people are connecting these two things together. I think Trump presented a plan to shut down USAID early in February. I think it was around February 6th or something. And then the

quite literally the next day the video came out. So I think it's easy to connect the dots. And since you and I both work in the media business, we know that sometimes we caught wind of something before happening and we start preparing for things to air once it happens. So we get that. And I can see why people are saying that. But if you look at really the details of it,

The USAID gave BBC about $3.2 million between the 2023 to 2024 financial year, and it went to the charity arm of the group. I think it counted for less than 10% of that charity arm's budget that year.

But the overall revenue from BBC was around $6.7 billion. That's what I found online. So, you know, $3.2 million, $6.7 billion, that's a huge difference. I'm not sure whether $3.2 is enough to sway the whole thing like that.

So BBC does take funding from USAID, but only a very small portion of its profit. And does that, I mean, is that enough to influence their editorial stance?

I think to a certain extent, but not enough to have that kind of a course change. So, you know, it was completely 180 degree turn. So I'm not sure that's enough to make that kind of a change, but it certainly does have an influence. Okay. So now let's look at this particular report from BBC.

The theme of this report has highlighted China's progress toward the goals in the initiative Made in China 2025. And for those people that are unfamiliar with this topic, what exactly is this initiative and how close is China to achieving these targets?

Well, this initiative, this plan was actually unveiled in 2015 by the State Council. It's China's first 10-year action plan focusing on promoting manufacturing, not the low-end kind of manufacturing, but high-end, in high-tech, in digital area, in aerospace, things like that.

And it actually proposed a three-step strategy to get China to become a leading high-tech manufacturing power by 2049, which is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the PRC. So that's the main gist of the plan. As to how close, I've seen reports saying that it's about 86% done. I think that's from the South China Morning Post.

And there are areas that we have exceeded expectations like EVs and solar energies, these things that people are well aware of. And there are also places where we are not there yet in semiconductors, for example. So, you know, people say it's about 86% done and clearly there's a 14% gap there, but I'm not really worried about the 14%.

So it's been largely accomplished and one of China's most recent technological breakthroughs. Also mentioned in the BBC report,

is, of course, the AI model DeepSeek. And compared to the previous achievements from the country, DeepSeek seems to have made a particularly significant impact overseas. And what makes this AI model stand out? Because I know you just very recently made a video that's also talking about this generative AI model from China.

yeah i think uh there are two parts to this the one is the technical part which is it's uh low cost more efficient i mean if you remember that very soon after deep seek came out there are reports saying that mark zuckerberg uh rushed to his office and set up i think four war rooms of engineers trying to figure out how the heck china did this um he i mean he spent billions on

training his own program, but DeepSeq only costed about less than $6 million. So that's also a very huge gap over there. And then, of course, as recently we've read that DeepSeq has committed to be open source.

And that's something I think has shocked the world to be so open about it and allowing everybody to use it to make programs that are tailored to their needs. So there are quite a technical aspect to it. And on the other side, I think it's shocking because it really made people realize that AI is not

You cannot monopolize AI. We've all known this, that you cannot contain innovation. You cannot try to get a dominant position forever. We understand that. And I think people in the West, they also understood it. But now when this is shoved in their face, it's still surprising.

they suddenly found out that they don't have the ultimate say here. China can develop its own technology that can rival theirs, even though sometimes they try to stop China from doing it, but China still did it. I mean, that's why this Made in China 2025 got into the headline, I think, because

These two are connected. I mean, the China's model is quite simple. We have a government that has influence over the market, but we also have a market that runs its own course. And what China is trying to do is try to see if these two things can go along together. If the government could set an agenda and mobilize the policy and the financial resources to help certain sectors to grow faster than the others.

That's basically what China is doing here. And for a very long time, I remember when that plan came out, I was still a student in the United States. And all the report that I read was, you know, it's not going to work. You cannot have the government saying things like this and have accomplished. Well, we did it.

So it proves that it's workable. This is a model that could work at least now. It performs perfectly. And then you see the United States kind of emulating China's actions with its CHIPS Act, the most common one under the Biden administration. It's also the government saying we should help the chip industry develop and we want the market to make the chips better. So that's what the U.S. is doing also.

So that's, I think, what's really surprising, what really shocked the people in the West is that they found that what they committed to or what they thought was absolute turns out to be not so absolute, that there are other models that could get to where they are today.

Yeah, so no one expected the monopoly by US in the AI industry is broken by China. And now we know that the Made in China 2025 has been spoken highly by BBC. And now in terms of this AI model, DeepSeek, how has it been portrayed by Western media? I mean, there must be both positive and negative coverages.

Yeah, definitely. They are both positive and negative. I think even sometimes there are negatives within the positive. So it's a very mixed picture right now. So on the positive side, people are saying, are talking about its competitiveness, its pricing, its open sourceness, and how

how the US or the other Western, why didn't the other Western companies make the same thing with such limited resources? I think that's what most of them are focusing on. And on the rather negative side, there is the usual kind of conversation around privacy, around personal information protection, whether there is surveillance built into the system and

As we've all known now, there's this national security part of the conversation. National security is always there, whether China's going to use deep-seek to spy or get information from them. So the negative part is rather, what I would say is the conventional conversation nowadays around China. So to me, I ignore them, basically.

They will always say this about some kind of a Chinese technology breakthrough. Yeah, but I think it's fair to say that this Chinese AI model has received a lot of positive reviews. I mean, even Trump referred to DeepSeek as a wake-up call for American tech firms. And now let's look deeper into this issue.

shift in the tone on how the West looks at Chinese technological breakthroughs. Because in contrast, the West used to take a very different approach toward Chinese tech firms like ZTE, Huawei, the 5G telecommunication tech companies, and there's still an ongoing debate on the short video platform TikTok, which is a subsidiary of the Chinese tech firm ByteDance.

And now they seem to be more open to accept and acknowledge the achievements from Chinese tech companies. I mean, what do you think that has led to this shift in attitude on how they look at Chinese high techs?

I think it's kind of a forced change on their part. I'm not sure if they are now more willing to admit it, but they have to now because it's right there in their face. They just cannot ignore it anymore. As to the shift in the trend, I think first, they cannot ignore it. I mean, China's solar panels, the electric vehicles,

deep seek and drones i mean the the the the robots all these things are out there for them to see and buy and use i mean they have huge market share overseas so it's in their daily lives they just cannot take it out anymore and put it separately and also i think there's a

deeper thing that has been going on. I mean, for me, they started recognizing this all the way back to Huawei and 5G, as you mentioned, because their conversation over there is really about fighting for market shares. I mean, people know it has nothing to do with national security. It's just an excuse, but it's about market.

And they have no way to compete with that, whether it's in Europe or in other places. So they have to find an excuse to shut that down.

And that's actually, in retrospect, that's acknowledging China's manufacturer power. But they put it in quite a negative limelight so people don't really realize it. And then throughout these years, that trend kind of shifted and now they started to really see that, okay, now we have to face it head on. This is better or this is competitive and we cannot try to make it less so anymore.

So a lot of these recent technological breakthroughs from China, they have largely come from private firms in the country. 5G technologies we have talked about, and then there's drone technology from the Shenzhen-based DJI company, and of course short video algorithms from TikTok, and then the dancing robots from the Spring Festival Gala this year.

I mean, have you observed other similar products that could make a global impact sometime near in the future?

I mean, you just mentioned a lot of things that I've observed also. I mean, DJI has 75% of the US drone market and there's the dancing robot on the New Year's Gala. So, you know, there are many things that people have already known. As for me, the problem I have is that I don't know. That's the beauty part about this innovation and technology. Maybe just like DeepSeek, no one saw that coming. Yes.

Yes, no one saw that coming and we don't really know where it's going. I mean, so far we know that DeepSea has already coupled with universities or private companies to develop higher, better products. I mean, it's cooperation with BYD is lowering its tech requirements so that the lower priced models can have what used to be exclusive for high-end models.

So these things, they have a life of their own. They keep growing. And the beauty part is that we don't know where that's going. And I really do think that, I mean, innovation comes from the private firms. That's sort of a given in economics. And there's no one that can fight against that.

So I'm really excited to see where this is going. And with the trend that we are going on, I expect that we see more and more because this is really the, I don't know whether it's the culmination or the first manifestation of all the economic power that we have accumulated for the past four or five decades.

there's got to be a break point. And I think this is one of the break points that we're witnessing right now. Yeah. The private firms from China have always been pressing ahead. And how Western media look at these achievements from China have more or less not been objective enough. But that doesn't really change how the Chinese companies develop their strategy. And now, obviously, there seems to be

a shift in tone from the Western media when it comes to their reporting on China's progress. And do you think this moment, for example, the missing of the tagline, at what cost from BBC, do you think this moment represents a turning point in how China's achievements are portrayed in Western media? Or is it too early to say? I think it's too early to say.

Mainly because I think in the West, they are facing an identity crisis right now. They don't know what's going on with themselves. They used to be incredibly liberal and they talk about internationalists and they talk about free trade. Now they are so protectionist and nationalist.

So I think there's a confusion going on there and they don't know how they are going to come out of that. They don't know whether it's a Trump thing, whether it's a four years thing, where it's going to be something long-term. So they are still figuring that out. But at some point they're going to settle on something. And I think

once they settle, they will still be kind of anti-China because fundamentally the differences in our political systems, our philosophies, our values are rooted really in our cultural origins. That's really hard to pave over. We can say we can tolerate each other, but maybe not so friendly with each other. And with all the nationalists going

going on. I don't know whether it's going to be more adversarial or just competitor. So that's still something that we need to figure out and they need to figure out also. So I think for this period of time, the Western media will have a slight adjust to their approach to China because

China at this moment presents something that's more familiar to them because China is talking about the free trade, because China is talking about the rule-based international system instead of, you know, I'm going to buy your land or something like that. So I think for the moment, China has a more familiar approach.

feeling to the Western media. So maybe we will see some of these issues. These used to be what considered to be soft issues, climate, tech, movies, or other things. When it comes to these kind of issues, Western media will have a more positive portrayal of China. But in the long term, I still think that China will be treated badly, if you will.

But regardless, China's technological advancements will continue, but maybe sometime in the future we might expect to hear that tagline again, but at what cost? Yeah, definitely. Thank you very much for your time, Jian. No problem, thank you. China's technological breakthroughs are a powerful testament to the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit driving its private sector.

From giants like Huawei, DJI and BYD to rising stars like Xiaomi, Unitree and DeepSeek, Chinese companies are not just pushing the boundaries of high-tech innovation, they are redefining the landscape of global technological progress. Love it or fear it, the transformative impact of these companies is undeniable, reaching far beyond China's borders.

As the world watches and reacts, one thing is certain. The story of China's tech revolution is far from over. That brings us to the end of this episode of Deep Dive. If you enjoyed what you just heard, don't forget to follow us on your podcast platforms. Just search for Deep Dive. You can also leave a comment to let us know what you want to learn about China and beyond.

This episode is brought to you by me, Li Yunqi, and my colleagues Zhang Zhang and Qi Zhi. Special thanks to CGTN opinion editor Huang Jiyuan. I'll see you in the next one.