‘Iron rice bowl’ vs the algorithm: why China’s economy may better withstand the AI shock

On a day typically considered one of the happiest on the calendar for Chinese workers – the eve of Chinese New Year, when families gather for dinner in the midst of an extended public holiday – the annual Spring Festival Gala, the world’s most-watched television programme, left some in the viewing audience with a sense of profound disillusionment.

As a troupe of humanoid robots break-danced, flipped, swung swords and performed comedy sketches at the gala, domestic AI brands occupied the show’s highly sought advertising slots with unprecedented frequency. The display of China’s tech prowess left many of the programme’s roughly 677 million viewers deep in thought – weighing not joy or curiosity about the country’s progress, but the fear of being displaced.

They took to social media, where they were not reserved in sharing their trepidation. “I feel one step closer to losing my job,” wrote one. “It’s here to take away the jobs of hardworking people,” said another. One even saw the threat reaching outside the office: “Dancers and performers will be the first to lose their jobs.”

The artificial intelligence scare was not limited to China. A week after the gala, a report from little-known US firm Citrini Research on how AI advancements would lead to mass unemployment and economic recession triggered a major sell-off on Wall Street.

Although these worries are growing amid the technology’s rapid advancement in China, industry insiders point out that AI is already creating a large number of new jobs and that the country’s economy – with an expansive public sector – appears better positioned to withstand potential disruptions.

Still, displacement was indeed happening, and how Chinese workers, employers and policymakers adjusted to the new reality would determine whether AI was ultimately a helpful assistant for humans or led to their downfall, they added.

The creators of AI are now among those who may bear the brunt. Software engineers in China’s technology sector were already struggling with “the curse of 35”, a term to describe tech and corporate employees at risk of being laid off once they reach that age. With AI, the deadline seems to be arriving even earlier.

With a decade of experience as a software engineer working for a Chinese tech giant in Beijing, David Chen said many of his peers were feeling anxious because their expertise was primarily in coding. Now 80 per cent of his coding work is performed by AI, and a task that used to take three days can now be completed in two or three hours. As the work efficiency grows, so does the workload, because he has more features to work on for each app update.