When DeepSeek burst onto the global stage in January 2025, it seemed to appear out of nowhere. But the large language model was just one of the thousands of generative AI tools that have been released in China since 2023—and there’s a public archive of every single one of them.
The country’s top internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), requires that any company launching an AI tool with “public opinion properties or social mobilization capabilities" first file it in a public database: the algorithm registry. In a submission, developers must show how their products avoid 31 categories of risk, from age and gender discrimination to psychological harm to “violating core socialist values.”
Applicants submit their filing to their local CAC (say, the Shanghai CAC for Shanghai-registered firms), which forwards applications to the central CAC for final approval. Only then is a tool publicly listed in the algorithm registry. While the European Union is pursuing a single, comprehensive AI Act, notes Matt Sheehan, a research scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China’s approach to regulation is more ad hoc, targeting specific algorithms and building up iterative standards. (The US has no comparable registration system or centralized regulatory agency.)
Over time, the CAC has inadvertently created the most detailed map of a nation’s AI ecosystem anywhere in the world.
*Data current as of April 2025, includes both “generative AI” and “deep synthesis” algorithms
Open the CAC’s update from August 2024 and you’ll find DeepSeek listed as entry 152, a single row in a neatly packed table. Scroll through the table and you’ll find an AI that manages homestays and an AI that drafts patents. One assists ob-gyns in a Shanghai maternity ward; another helps manage state power grids. Kendra Schaefer and her colleagues at Trivium China, a Beijing-based policy consultancy, have been compiling the CAC’s updates into a comprehensive database, enriched with their own research.
A Broad View of the Boom
Nearly 80 percent of China’s generative AI registrations are clustered in and around its top tech hubs—Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. Each city has its strengths: Beijing’s elite universities, national labs, and political strength give it an edge in large-scale innovation; Shenzhen (in Guangdong) is home to a dense hardware supply chain and vast pool of engineering talent; Shanghai, close to multinationals, excels at commercialization; and Hangzhou (in Zhejiang) is fueled by Alibaba’s ecommerce empire.
But innovation spreads far beyond the coasts. Chongqing is positioning itself as an AI manufacturing and logistics node; and heavy state investment has helped Hefei, in Anhui Province, become known as “China’s speech valley” for its cluster of speech-recognition firms, including iFlyTek. Filings also originate in less obvious regions like Guizhou, China’s “Big Data Valley,” where massive data centers power Huawei’s Pangu model, and Inner Mongolia, where state enterprises are integrating AI into mining and agriculture.
*Data current as of April 2025
... continue reading