Chinese AI Rings in the Year of the Horse

a Lunar New Year AI roundup

This post originally appeared in ChinaTalk.

“Seedance 2.0 is a ‘Sputnik’ moment that even surpasses DeepSeek’s R1 release last year.”

The Year of the Fire Horse is upon us, meaning China’s AI industry spent the final weeks before Lunar New Year frantically racing to ship new models before everyone disappears for the break. Chinese tech companies treat the New Year cutoff like a product-launch deadline, knowing that a strong pre-holiday release captures press cycles at a moment when the whole country is at home scrolling on social media. Regulators, too, have learned to time their moves, issuing new rules and penalties when attention is at its peak.

All the ensuing noise can make it hard to see what matters most. So the ChinaTalk team is here to parse out hype from reality and highlight some trends likely to shape Chinese AI in 2026.

Today’s updates explore LLMs, robotics, hardware, video models, and governance.