The WeChat AI Field Guide
a community-generated guide in progress + write for ChinaTalk!
Much of the coverage we do at ChinaTalk relies on WeChat, the Tencent super-app where most Chinese people send messages, consume content, and share updates with friends and family. WeChat is a huge information ecosystem and an arguably essential resource for following the latest news in China’s AI landscape.
Where should you go on WeChat (and on the broader Chinese internet) to learn about what’s happening in AI? The ChinaTalk Cinematic Universe brings you a comprehensive guide to following AI on WeChat, featuring:
How to make your WeChat work like Substack;
Various types of AI media outlets;
And how to read beyond WeChat.
We’re also looking to run a weekly roundup of the most interesting Chinese developments around AI in the newsletter. If interested, submit a sample here. We pay!
How WeChat Works
Specifically relevant for our purposes is the “Official Accounts” tab. It’s a little like a Substack ecosystem inside WeChat: anyone can open an Official Account on WeChat and publish articles to their subscribers’ feeds — and reading and sharing Official Account articles is a daily occurrence for WeChat users. Government organs, public service authorities, news media (both state-run and independent), and corporations alike use Official Accounts to communicate with citizens.
Subscribing to relevant Official Accounts is the most streamlined way to read Chinese tech news directly from the source. WeChat makes it very easy for non-Chinese speakers to navigate by putting a “Translate Full Text” option at the top of every article, although the quality of translation remains mediocre relative to what ChatGPT can deliver.
Our Favorites
For headlines:
新智元 AI Era
Founded in 2015 by Yang Jing 杨静, then a researcher at the Ministry of Civil Affairs-affiliated Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, AI Era is one of the earliest and most successful media-entrepreneurship ventures to focus on AI in China. AI Era hosted the inaugural World AI Conference (WAIC) back in 2016. Its feed is a blend of repackaged stories from Western tech media, accessible explanations of new ML/AI research, and content for aficionados. While AI Era doesn’t produce a lot of original reporting, it is a solid one-stop shop for keeping up with the Chinese AI Joneses.
Where to start:
The AI Era team tests GPT-5-Codex;
A breakdown of the DeepSeek-R1 Nature paper.
量子位 QbitAI
QbitAI is an AI-focused media startup whose Official Account similarly reaches many in China’s AI community. Its coverage is relatively accessible and includes popular trends.
Where to start:
How vibe-coding is changing Haidian 海淀, the Silicon Valley of Beijing;
The AI technology stack behind Xiaohongshu/Rednote, China’s trendiest social app.
机器之心 Synced
Founded in 2015, Synced is a leading source of information on emerging tech in China. They cover machine learning research much more closely than more generalist tech publications, and they host their own directory of models.
Where to start:
Amazon Bedrock now supports Qwen3 and DeepSeek-V3.1;
Launch of Tongyi DeepResearch Agent.
机器人大讲堂 RoboSpeak (suggested by Zilan Qian)
RoboSpeak is a joint media venture between Zhongguancun Rongzhi Specialized Robotics Alliance (ZSRA), a Beijing-based robotics industry organization, and the startup incubator TusStar, earning financial support from a variety of public and private partners. Its work lies between journalism and think-tank research, and is well-known in the Chinese robotics community.
Where to start:
An interview with Professor Wang Hesheng 王贺升 of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who will serve as general chair of the 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Hangzhou;
Observations from the 2025 China International Industry Fair.
For business-savvy reportage:
36氪 36Kr
36Kr calls itself a platform for “participants of China’s new economy.” It’s a business media outlet with a heavy dose of tech reporting — the TechCrunch of China, if you will — and consequently produces some of the best original Chinese-language reporting on technology as a business. Their deep understanding of the relationships between technology, Chinese society, and the economy makes reading their work particularly informative for analysts.
Where to start:
Graphing vertically integrated supply chains to understand the success of Chinese hardware startups;
How entrepreneur Wang Laichun 王来春, whose company Luxshare will build OpenAI’s first consumer device, went from Foxconn factory girl to “the richest Teochew businesswoman”.
A highly abridged translation of Zilan Qian’s article she wrote for us on ‘Why America Builds AI Girlfriends and China Makes AI Boyfriends’ article! See below for her commentary on what they took out.
Thanks to 36kr’s translation, my relatives in China can finally read my work—and thanks to its selective censorship, they don’t have to worry about me running into political trouble! Here are the things that the translation removed, which I guess partly because it is politically sensitive and partly because the translator thought my article was too long:
The Regulatory Comparison: The original introductory analysis comparing U.S. regulatory concerns (FTC inquiry on child use) with Chinese concerns (AI Safety Framework 2.0 on social order and childbirth) was entirely removed. This seemed an editorial choice, as the translators began the translation with their own introduction of my article.
The Core Political Analysis: The entire section linking the Chinese government’s motivation for regulating AI boyfriends to the demographic crisis, low birth rates, and the government’s historical use of the “leftover women” label was omitted. I still credit them for mentioning the stigma of “leftover women,” even though they erased who created it.
The Geopolitical Risk: The discussion detailing the rise and disappearance of the Chinese app Talkie from the U.S. App Store—and its analysis as a potential “more powerful TikTok” national security threat due to intimate persuasion and data risks—was also removed.
Sexual Content Details: The detailed explanation of monetizing sexuality via “freemium” models, including specific mentions of “unblurred explicit images” and ‘NSFW’ features, was heavily condensed. Only the thesis statement “both models seek to capitalize on sexuality to attract and retain users” remained.
Finally, the translator replaced “inside the Great Firewall” (防火墙) with “inside the Great Wall” (长城) when the article shifted to describe the AI companion market in China, suggesting an artistry in how some master the subtleties of translation under censorship.
钛媒体 TMTPost
Another tech-focussed media outlet with a solid journalistic track record, the “TMT” in TMTPost stands for technology, media, and telecommunications. Its coverage of entrepreneurs and Big Tech firms in China is particularly strong. We previously translated TMTPost’s 2024 interview with Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing 王兴兴.
Where to start:
A conversation with Xu Zhijun 徐直军, a rotating chairman at Huawei, about AI compute;
What’s happening with AI in Hong Kong.
For human-centered stories:
AI故事计划 AIstory
AIstory is a new media brand under Beijing Zhen’gu Media Group (北京真故传媒有限公司), best known for the nonfiction publishing platform TrumanStory 真实故事计划 . The company was founded by Lei Lei 雷磊, a former Southern Weekly and GQ reporter in China, and has excelled at long-form, human-centered reporting despite China’s brutal journalistic landscape. AIstory focuses on humanizing the impact of AI on Chinese society and unearths particularly unique angles beyond labs, policymakers, or investors.
Where to start:
Manus’ sudden move to Singapore, as told by an intern;
How fangirls are leading the charge to resist AI-generated media content in China;
Why DeepSeek created even more busywork for Chinese low-level bureaucrats.
硅星人Pro
By Afra:
A Chinese-language WeChat publication at the intersection of AI, technology, and culture. Its core reporting covers the fast-moving world of large models—DeepSeek, R1, and every new version that emerges—alongside architecture strategies, compute efficiency, cost dynamics, and the competitive landscape shaping the global AI race.
But 硅星人Pro’s regular features dive into tech culture and labor issues, exploring how AI and automation collide with the realities of work, inequality, and the everyday life of engineers, gig workers, and startup employees.
Sometimes you find sarcastic, sometimes salty voice. Readers can expect sharp takes on the AI bubble, founder dramas, job replacement anxieties, ageism in the tech industry, and the broader involution of both Silicon Valley and China’s own innovation scene.
GeekPark (极客公园)
By Afra:
GeekPark (极客公园) is one of the few Chinese tech media outlets that consistently produces in-depth, long-form original reporting on China’s technology industry.
Among domestic outlets, it’s often seen as the closest equivalent to Western tech media: blending narrative reporting, analysis, and insider access in a way that feels more like The Verge and Wired than a typical WeChat information feed.
For wonky analysis (suggested by Bitwise):
中国信息通信研究院 China Academy of Information and Communications Technology
CAICT is a research institute directly under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, specializing in research on the digital economy and technology policy. Their Official Account publishes helpful executive summaries of their reports and official readouts from various Chinese conferences related to AI. Its feed is certainly less exciting than many of the other Official Accounts mentioned above, but it is a very helpful resource to understand where technocrats in Beijing are placing their attention.
Where to start:
Ten keywords for the AI industry in 2025;
A list of example cases for digitalizing the manufacturing industry in China.
阿里研究院 Alibaba Research Institute
Alibaba’s in-house industry research think tank produces many interesting reports about AI applications, safety, and governance. You should take their findings with a grain of salt on account of their corporate ownership, but their work is nevertheless interesting.
Where to start:
Official transcript of CEO Eddie Wu’s September 2025 speech on the path to AGI;
Analyzing business models for incorporating AI into consumer products in China.
腾讯研究院 Tencent Research Institute
In contrast to the ARI above, Tencent’s in-house think tank works more broadly across social science and humanistic topics. Their work, influenced by the thorough penetration of Chinese citizens’ private lives by Tencent products, has a stronger focus on how AI is shaping Chinese society.
Where to start:
Annual survey on the Chinese public’s views on generative AI;
TRI series on AI and education.
Influencers:
By afra:
Cyber Zen Heart (赛博禅心)
Cyber Zen Heart (赛博禅心) is one of the growing AI influencers on WeChat. He updates at breakneck speed, often catching the pulse of a new model, tool, or meme before the mainstream discourse picks it up. Beyond commentary, he has quietly shaped the scene: helping many early AI consumer apps think through their go-to-market strategy, coaching founders on how to generate buzz, and amplifying their launches to wider audiences.
The account is run by the owner, nicknamed”Big Smart”, of Beijing Haidian’s AGI Bar, a late-night hangout where AI founders, hackers, and artists cross paths. His posts swing between news update, “omg this is awesome”-bait articles, and deliberately confusing memes—half koan, half hype cycle. That mix makes him feel like “China’s Lenny” (as in Lenny Rachitsky): a guide and amplifier for a new generation of builders. I wrote about my experience in the AGI bar here.
半导体行业观察
半导体行业观察 is one of China’s most dedicated WeChat publications tracking the chip world. It dives deep into the nitty-gritty technical details of semiconductor design, fabrication, and packaging—so deep that, to a casual reader, it can sometimes feel painfully dry and even boring for someone like me. Where the account shines is in its close tracking of China’s domestic chip research and development. Like many chip-focused outlets, the tone occasionally reflects the geopolitical tensions surrounding semiconductors.
LatePost 晚点
LatePost (晚点) is often described as “China’s version of The Information”: known for high-quality, deeply sourced reporting on business and technology. Its editorial strength lies in exclusive founder interviews, inside scoops, and longform articles that cut through hype to reveal how China’s leading companies. The LatePost podcast—published under the same name—has become a must-listen for anyone trying to understand China’s AI ecosystem.
Luo Yonghao’s Crossing Road 罗永浩的十字路口
Luo Yonghao’s Crossing Road 罗永浩的十字路口 is a new longform podcast hosted by Luo Yonghao—once a smartphone entrepreneur, now one of China’s most recognizable internet personalities. Think of him as a mix between Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman in a Chinese context: curious, blunt, and willing to let conversations stretch out for hours
Each episode runs about 3 hours, giving founders, cultural figures, and celebrities the space to share deeply personal stories and unfiltered thoughts. Among the standout episodes is Luo’s marathon conversation with He Xiaopeng, founder of XPeng Motors—widely regarded as a must-listen for anyone who wants to understand the ambitions, struggles, and psychology behind China’s EV wave.
Beyond WeChat
The downside to WeChat’s Official Account ecosystem is that its comment function is often restricted, and it can be hard to go beyond the article if you are looking for more context. Other parts of the Chinese internet can offer more community-based insights on technology and provide direct access to insiders’ views.
CSDN
CSDN, China’s first open-source community, is a web forum for developers that dates back to 1999. Discussions on there feel like a mix of Stack Overflow and Hacker News, and contain many useful technical resources. ChinaUnix is another similar forum.
Zhihu
Imagine if Quora still had loyal users — that’s basically Zhihu. Though it has deteriorated from its heyday as a bastion of liberal debate on the Chinese internet in the 2010s, Zhihu remains a platform where scholars, thinkers, and technologists are quite active. Our story on Kimi relied heavily on Moonshot AI engineers’ commentary on Zhihu, and so did this guest post by Mary Clare McMahon on Huawei’s attempts at bypassing Nvidia CUDA.
Xiaohongshu…?
Yes, that Xiaohongshu/Rednote. If you know what you’re doing, it can be a uniquely valuable resource. Xiaohongshu has an especially strong network effect for academic and tech-focused communities. Searching for ML/AI-related keywords on Xiaohongshu eventually leads you to professors, entrepreneurs, and investors influential in the space, as well as many, many anonymous insiders posting offhand observations and rumours in comment sections. It’s arguably the closest thing to getting those elusive-but-unreliable “vibes on the ground.”
Between language barriers and the Great Firewall, it can seem difficult to get reliable information about the world of technology in China. We hope that by highlighting these great Chinese-language resources, we can encourage more people to conduct their own open-source research and enrich debates in the English-speaking world.
Have other Official Account recommendations? Reply to this email or drop your suggestion in the comments!
We’re also looking to run a weekly roundup of the most interesting Chinese writing on AI in the newsletter. If you’re interested, submit a sample here. We pay!
Very helpful, thanks Irene!
Thanks Irene!! So many interesting recommendations on this list! Excited to check them out. 罗永浩 as a crossover between joe Regan/lex is so on point hahahha
Re: xiaohongshu, in my mind it feels like academic twitter/X sometimes!