Hello, this is Eva. And you're listening to the In
Between Tech and Trust podcast right now.
There is a global race on the way, as you all might know.
And we all ask ourselves, well, who is it going to be?
And also how is it going to turn out on a global scale?
And most of the European conversation about it is
happening at a significant remove from what is actually on
the ground and feasible in China.
And so I'm particularly intrigued that this week's guest
is one of the. A few people.
In a position to actually help us understand of what's going on
and also look into the gap of knowledge that we might have.
And so Vincent Xiang is the founder of China AI Connect.
He's based out of Europe, but he's someone who works daily
between Chinese AI founders and European investors.
And in his role, he's advising both sides on what the other is
actually doing and what they might also get wrong about each
other, what they might benefit from each other.
And so in our conversation, we get deep into whether China's AI
deployment is genuinely A surveillance dystopia, whether
that Labels has more about Western assumptions than Chinese
reality. And we also talk about what
European companies and investors are misreading about the Chinese
AI landscape and what it means that the world is currently
splitting into distinct and possibly well maybe permanent AI
blocks, which we're currently not quite sure about and which
we'll definitely need some follow up and seeing whether or
where it's headed. The question underneath for me
was a significant one because in a global.
AI arms race Can we actually? Trust between the ecosystems
that we build and or is managing the gap a realistic ambition
overall? Welcome, Vincent, and I'm so
happy to have you on the In Between Tech and Trust podcast.
Thank you, Eva, it's a pleasure to be here and thank you for
inviting me. I was really looking forward to
our conversation because you're one of the experts to talk all
the happenings that we can refer to when it comes to tech in
China most of all, and also, you know, bridging the technological
progress between Europe and China overall.
And when you think about the intersection of technology and
trust, what is the very first thing that comes to your mind,
particularly from a perspective of working between China and the
global AI ecosystem? I think this is a really good
start for the conversation. So the first word coming to my
mind is actually difference. So let me explain a bit more.
So as you said, I working in between the two ecosystems,
China and Europe. I often think that technology
and trust is understood across China and Europe very
differently. In China, for example, when we
launch a new product and new services, people can ask how
does this going to change our lives?
How does it this going to improve our lives?
Will you save time? We need to improve our quality
of living. So when they think that the
answer is yes, they are willing to try it and then over time the
trust will build, right? If you look at Alipay and WeChat
Pay, together they are serving 1.8 billion accounts in China.
People use it for every cent network payment, for
transportation, for online working, etcetera.
So they are more willing to use and taste and new ideas and new
products In China, when I look at Europe, it's often very
different. So the first question people
often ask is, so where is a guardrail, right?
Is that safe for my data, where my data is going to be stored,
how it's going to be collected? So there's more cautious number
caution when it comes to like trying new technology.
And so this is coming more from the different kind of history
and different value and that actually shapes how AI is
regulated, how AI is adopted, how AI is used across China and
Europe. And now you've founded the AI
Connect, and that means that you're building an understanding
across systems and cultures, but also across stakeholders.
And it will be interesting for me to know what motivated you
personally to step into this. Also themely fitting in between
space. Yeah, wonderful.
I started a China AI Connect around six months ago.
First of all, I think AI in China, AI in Europe is a great
kind of topic, right? People are so interested to know
what is happening there, across Europe, across China.
I work with some founders in China to help them understand
the EU market and also work with European investors and
corporates to help them understand whether China AI is
relevant to their strategy to the business and whether
specific Chinese companies invest and compliant.
So I worked with people from both sides and I realized that,
you know, it's interesting that the the small people, often they
don't understand each other. There's like, you know, general
gap between Europe and China, how they perceive, how they
like, interpret, trust, interpret AI and technology.
So that is actually the reason I want to start China AI Connect.
So my role is actually a translator and a connector.
I translate reality to make sure people understand what is
happening, what is hype, what is real traction in the market and
also help them validate the assumptions regarding
partnership, regarding investment.
And also when there is unreal intent to engage deeper, I
connect the two parts together. So I also organize, for example,
some trips to bring the European executives to China so that they
can meet the founders and operators on the ground.
And now when you translate realities and also when you
build bridges, so to say, and when you follow along the
Western debates that are happening right now, trust and
tech is most of the time framed around individual rights or also
skepticism, as you pointed out, sometimes also the regulation
aspects. How is trust and technology
understood in China? I think I think in China that
fast technology is much less about individual rights, but
more about, you know, whether this is a working to improve my
life or to improve the life collectively.
As I also hinted earlier, when when we have a new product or
new kind of technology, people often ask question, you know,
whether this is going to help the city be safer, help our life
be better. Does it really reduce the time
So when they are when they're convinced that this is you're
working and you have the trust which is built quickly.
So one example is Alipay. We all know Alipay many years
ago when Alibaba started the business, the e-commerce
business, at that time people didn't trust the strangers.
They don't want to know pay to online seller before they
receive the goods. But then Alibaba introduced this
escrow system. So basically the sellers only
get the get the money when the consumers confirm that they have
received the goods. So people don't really trust the
strangers, but it's fasten the system they trust that, you
know, this a system that is reliable, that is networking,
that is improving our lives so that we can buy sense online at
a cheap cost. We can get the goods delivered
on time. So that is actually, you know,
when we how we approach the new technology in China.
And then using the same logic in many other areas like red
hailing, the food delivery healthcare apps.
But if you compare that with with Europe, right, where people
often, you know, want to transparency and safeguards
first before they're willing to to trust.
So in China, we often like to pay more your attention on
experience, if the experience is is OK, is reliable, is like
trustworthy and the adoption and the trust follow suit
afterwards. What you know described was
quite from the business perspective, but from also your
experiences and the involvement that you have other differences
on the cultural, historical and also on a societal level, which
might vary kind of a bit because there are also so many nuances
to it. Yeah, exactly.
China is a big country, so there's a lot of nuances.
So, you know, my generation, especially my parents
generation, so people in China were living in poverty.
And my generation, we have seen that, you know, the economy has
been developing so fast and we have eradicated extreme poverty.
And there are so many like middle class people now in
China. So when we grew up in poverty
and then see the society has been transformed to still
technologies to a larger scale, kind of, you know, factories
kind of solutions. We have a tendency to believe
that the larger scale kind of solution or infrastructure is
working. And that is why I think, you
know, in my generation, people are more willing to try
nuisance. They are more willing to
actually accept or embrace new technology.
And then that is the axe. That is a cultural part, right?
Compared with, you know, other societies, I think Chinese
people, we are more willing to open and to new technologies.
If you look at society, I think definitely there's a difference
because, you know, China is so big and so diverse.
When you go to cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen, hear those
people talking about, you know, robotaxis and autonomous driving
and the AI models. But when you go to rural cities
like the third tier cities, people are so happy when they
can pay online with their phone rather than going to the banks,
right? So there's definitely the
progress is distributed unevenly in China, but overall people are
more winning and more open to accepting new technologies.
And now you've described a bit the different kinds of societal
approaches and also adoptions to technology overall in China.
But where do you see the biggest cultural mismatches?
When Western companies try to interpret, use or also
incorporate Chinese AI strategy and progresses and the other way
around as well. I, I think actually the, I think
the biggest cultural mismatch is also coming from the first
question we ask ourselves. In Europe, the first question is
often about, is this legitimate? Is it, you know, safe?
Does it respect individual rights?
But in China, the first question is often more about, you know,
does it work? Does it improve efficiency?
Does it help the system run better because of that?
And the Western companies often take look at Chinese AI systems
and see many as a way of control or a demonstration of power.
I think that perspective actually means how much of the
focus is actually on productivity, on logistics, on
healthcare and economic upgrading.
Speed and iteration are seen as very positive in China.
On the other side, I also seen that Chinese companies often
misunderstood European companies in opposite way.
They they think that regulation in Europe is, is slow, is
inefficient. So many founders ask me, you
know, why it's so hard to get a license in Europe, but why it's
so hard? Why the consumers worry so much
about data sharing, Right. And I tell them that in Europe,
individual rights and the accountability is actually the
better of trust. So you have to be really
insured. That is, you know, understood
properly before you think about scaling to, to Europe.
When the two sides have this kind of misunderstanding, it's
harder for them to to, to build trust, to build relationship.
So I always talk with the two sides, say that you need to
understand the nuances and the differences, and then the trust
and the relationship will form more naturally.
And now when we look at the closer into the way that a like
China also approaches AI and within China, there's also most
of the time the portrait of AI being a superpower.
And it would be nice to understand from your experience
if that state is also sometimes being perceived as maybe a
surveillance dystopia, and if So, what the actual current
status and if this is really accurate.
Yeah, that's interesting. Eva.
I I think both labels right AI superpower and the surveillance
dystopia are a bit over overly simplified.
From what I've what I've seen on the ground, China's AI landscape
is very strong in application and in deployment, but are more
constrained in in the foundations.
And what I mean is that China is extremely good at deploying AI
in real world settings at scale. You often see that AI in
payments where fraud detection runs on massive scale.
You see AI in manufacturing where AI is now used for quality
control or for predictive maintenance.
At the same time, Chinese also depended on the foreign
technologies, especially from the US, like advanced
semiconductor chips for NVIDIA, high end manufacturing
equipment. So this carries no real
bottleneck. So China is powerful in using
and deploying AI, but more constraint in the critical
hardware and technology that, you know, shows you where China
is today in terms of AI deployment.
We are catching up very fast. We are developing very fast, but
there's always some critical dependency on the US technology.
You mentioned the surveillance dystopia.
This is interesting. I, I think on the surveillance
question, my personal experience is, is interesting.
I, I live in Germany for seven years.
I have many German friends. And when they visit China,
right, they notice that, you know, there are cameras
everywhere in cities like, you know, Shanghai and Hangzhou.
They would expect that people to feel like uncomfortable because
there's their cameras, maybe they feel being monitored, but
they notice that, hey, people don't really notice that camera
is there and they live the normal lives.
And they talk more about, you know, what, how the, the
congestion is reduced, how the accident has been prevented, how
that improves people's safety. The, the, the, the city's net
efficiency for local people. These systems are experienced
more as infrastructure, not as the political tools, right?
So, so of course, like there are also some concerns in terms of
that, you know, there are some reports showing that some data
leak may happen. So facial recognition has been
misused. So some companies also have
collected more data than they should.
So people have concerns. They also complain online and
yes and no source as well. You highlighted and you dove
with us into the current state. Do you have any hints on where
it's headed in the future? Yeah, I think, I think AI is
developing very fast now in China and that you have seen so
many progresses and so many experimentations and pilots in
the past. Now I think it's very clear that
the society were the progress isn't moving away from a phase
of experimentation or pilot into a phase of no fast and larger
scale real AI deployments. So, so now the question would be
how we actually turn AI into stable product across the
economy, how we actually monetize our solutions, right.
It's not just about, you know, investing into some R&D, but
more about how to actually make money with with AI.
And you see this in national strategies like the AI 2030.
China aims to become a leading AI technology provider by 20-30.
And there's a broader AI Plus initiative which aims to push AI
adoption to more than 90% across the major industries.
So it's about embedding AI, you know, deeply into the economy
and people's and daily lives. At the same time, regulation is
also tightening. We have aligned some basic AI
laws, but China now is also drafting more comprehensive AI
regulation, especially around generative AI data security and
safety reviews. So the message is quite clear,
you can innovate in China, but within certain boundaries.
And the next phase is not really about a piloting or showcasing
your capability. It's more about how to actually,
you know, use AI, leverage AI to improve our lives and how to
actually monetize the solutions. I think it's quite fascinating
how you talked about the way that it's supposed and you also
talked about the way of how it's more about the implementation
part and like really getting the value out of AI.
What role does trust play in China particularly and also in
terms of its rapid AI adoption? I think, yeah, any kind of
market and we want to transform a lot of industries.
I think the trust is one of the most important and most
underestimated kind of reasons. The one as spreads so fast in
China people often talk about population size right?
The market demand, the government of power, etc.
Or engineering talent. All of that matters.
But without fast nothing will really work.
Especially in technology from what I've seen.
I think it's faster place to 2 main roles.
The first is that it reduces friction.
A new system is introduced. People usually start with simple
questions like does it really make my life easier?
2nd and the tries to speed up adoption because people are
willing to try it. When you when you see that it's
working reliably, it improve the lives collectively, then you
seen adoption speed up quickly, right?
So definitely this kind of fast adoption are based on trust, how
people people are feel, whether people feel comfortable enough
to use it on a daily basis. Are there any differences when
it comes to trust in terms of also trusting into institutions
or in the platforms? You've now mentioned several
ones that are based out of China or in state coordination that
sometimes also are being perceived as quiet, you know,
based on heritage in China or so to say.
Same, Yeah. I think definitely there are
some differences among the different layers, right?
You mentioned institutions and platforms and governments.
Now from what I see on the ground, I feel like in a trust
is built through the three layers which are more
coordinated and connected, right, The government platforms
and the institutions. First the government says the
direction, right? And they tell the the market,
hey, the AI is a priority. They also mobilize the foundings
to support the early movers, the startups and those kind of early
companies and to develop the technology.
And they also sometimes like, you know, provide really some
policy support to help them launch the product.
And then the second is a platform.
We have companies like Alibaba and Tencent, and those are
leading tech companies. They actually turn the policy
into products. So they work together with the
regulators, with the government to actually build scalable
solutions for people to use. And then you have the
institutions you mentioned, which are, for example, the
hospitals, the schools, the city governments.
So these institutions, they normalize the usage, they adopt
these systems provided by the tech companies or the startups
and they, you know, also current environment that you can
actually make it easy for people to use and adopt those
technologies. So, so one good example is the
Hangzhou's and city brain, the government, they defined the
priorities, say, hey, we want to optimize the traffic management
in Hangzhou. And the Alibaba built the AI
system and the city, they adopted it as early customer.
And now people see that the commute time has been reduced,
the accident has been reduced, and the city becomes more,
becomes safer. So this kind of collaborative
and effort is showing that this 3 layers in China kind of like
reinforce each other. Of course, you have this kind of
structure elsewhere. But if I look at Europe, for
example, I feel like it's in my humble opinion, I feel like
these layers are more separated because they think about, you
know, individual rights. How's that?
That actually interfere with, you know, my my rights, my
privacy. So you can at some point slow
down the coordination. And you highlighted now some of
the players that are like super present in the Chinese market.
And I think what we can derive and it's independent of the
Chinese market, but we can see it on a global scale as well
that there is a fragmented tech stack and there are also sort of
fragmented kind of approaches to regulations or AI enormous.
How do you like perceive Chinese players of how they look into
this? Yeah, I mean, I, I talked with
the founders in China. I feel like most of them, they
think that their fragmentation will be kind of like permanent
now, right. You know, 10 or 15 years ago,
many founders, many people think that, hey, we're going to have
one global Internet and one set of standards, one set of, you
know, dominant ecosystem. And the idea is actually gone
because now with also geopolitical risk, that is
regarded as the part of the normal business in reality.
Now, when I talk with some Chinese founders, especially
those that are trying to expand globally, they often also see
that Europe is so hard to navigate due to the
fragmentation. There's one rule in Germany, one
rule in France, one rule in Brussels.
So that is why it's complicated from their perspective.
Oftentimes they think this, this is inefficient and this is slow.
And the same time, I also see that Europe is trying to address
this, this issue, right. We, we know that the initiative
like EU Ink are meant to reduce fragmentation and to harmonize
the rules across European member States.
So I definitely think that's the right direction.
But in my opinion, I think realistically, I don't think
fragmentation is going to go away anytime soon, especially
AI. We are moving towards a
different kind of techno technological flow.
If you look at US, the market is characterized by many large
proprietary closed source models dominated by open AI or isopic.
And in China, the ecosystem is or it's much more open.
We have open source of framework.
Many kind of models like Alibaba's Quinn, like Deep Sea
can, they're all open source. So different technology will
lead to different standards, spent business models and
different regulation. And so it's more likely that the
whole world will diverge into different AI ecosystems in the
future. And you will continue to see the
fragmentation globally. And that is why I often advise
the founders or the executives and when they are trying to
expand globally. I think this should definitely
and understand very early on the differences between regulation,
you know, how fast it's been built.
And also to build a compliance early on from day one into the
product, the compliance that should be treated as a core
feature on the product rather than a legal afterthought,
right? Right.
That will save you a lot of money when you address this you
know later. You said you talk a lot to
Chinese and startup founders and also the ecosystem that's on the
ground of how they think about AI when it becomes both an
economic engine, but then again also a geopolitic instrument
that we can see that this is also available going forward.
From my experience, my conversations with executives
and people close to policy in China, I'd say that Chinese
leaders are increasingly seeing AIS, strategic infrastructure.
I think the first priority is productivity and also
efficiency. AI is seen as a way to upgrade
manufacturing, logistics, energy and services in China, like many
other countries. And China's are facing the same
challenge in terms of, you know, rising labor costs, aging
population and slowing growth, right?
So leaders really look at AI as a way to maintain global
competitiveness without also relying too much on US
technology. So especially due to the
geopolitical tension between US and China.
And there's also growing concern about using US technology.
So it's also a national priority to be technologically self
reliant, especially to reduce dependency on those critical
hardwares like semiconductors, you know, cloud infrastructures,
you know, from US. So these are all seen as a
strategic choke points. And now in terms of like
technology experts, I think China always want to, you know,
export this technology to other countries also to grow their
market share, the footprint. So exporting sense like smart
city systems, industrial automation or digital platforms.
This is not just about business, right?
It's also about to to have influence and to have to create
standards so that there's, you know, ecosystem that is working
together to address the global problems.
So if the technology becomes widely used abroad, the
technical norms and practices will spread together with that.
I think that's one of the crucial aspects that still needs
to be, you know, also defined and probably also unpacked
further and also monitor it if you go along the way.
And that is one of the benefits of your role.
Because basically you're at the linchpin of also accompanying
that and accompanying also that together with European corporate
leaders and the investors that assess different kinds of
Chinese AI infrastructures. How this works of how your role
works. And also how like what
challenges you encounter when you dive into the strategy, the
specific Chinese opportunities with investors and the
compliance aspects of that in collaborating with the clients
or the ecosystem that you've formed?
So I work with both sides, both China and Europe.
So my role as a founder of China Air Connect, I help the European
investors and corporates evaluate whether China AI is
relevant to their business and to their strategy and whether a
specific Chinese company is investor point compliant.
On the China side, I help the founders understand the European
market and also to help them you find the go to market strategy
and to help them with product scaling.
So I have the privilege to work with very small people from both
sides. And as I said earlier, my role
is more like a transmitter and connector.
So I do enjoy those kind of, you know, work to really help the
conversation, to help the decision making and to connect
the two parts together. And now I do see that and
there's a strong growing interest about China, especially
after deep sick people realize that China AI is developing,
developing so fast and the gap between US and the China is
narrowing very fast. They want to understand what's
really happening in China, what's, you know, real, what's
the, the hype or what's like a real fraction in China.
But I think in the challenge now is, is that many European
investors are still very cautious about China.
So they know that and there's some very fundamental kind of
challenges in terms of data transfer, right regulation,
geopolitical risks, and those are all the factors and that
often times slow down the decision.
So I, I think it's, it's no easy, it's difficult to turn
from, I'm interested to, I'm investing in China, I'm going to
China. So the gap is still quite big.
So my goal is actually make it easy for people to understand
what's really happening in China and also to help them, you know,
connect with the founders and operators on the ground so that
they can go to China to see with their own eyes and to experience
technology by themselves, to form their own DP opinions.
And if you now look at that from particularly an individual point
of view and those who are building products or Koreas at
exactly like the intersection of the, you know, Chinese markets
and the tech and products that there are, we're out there,
particularly when we look into the entrance of it.
Do you have any hints on what the role and like of credibility
looks like and how trust like feeds into that and also how it
is needed to be established kind of way of entering the market in
itself? So once never learned from my
work with China's companies and European companies, I think it's
important to understand that presence matters more than brand
new when it comes to beauty relationships in China, right?
You know, it's a very relationship driven society.
There's a word guanxi, which is a very popular in business
business setting business, you know, environments.
So you need to be committed and also to be consistent when it
comes to building relationships with with the company's
ecosystems in China. Talking about, for example,
Siemens and Bosch, those German companies that have been in
China for decades and they have invested in factories, you know,
ID centers, they work with universities, they work with no
governments and regulators. And that is not how they build
trust and build, you know, the real connection in China, right
through consistent presence and commitment in China.
So that is definitely the good way to start because I often see
that now it's important for the European companies and to embed
themselves into the China local ecosystem.
Let's book a trip to go to China to talk with the founders and
the operators and to be to visit a few factories and companies
etcetera. And then it's a much better way
to actually understand what's happening and also to spark
conversations about a partnership, etcetera.
And we've not talked a lot about the present, but I do want to
try to look with you in the future.
How do you see the future of AI converging or not?
And then how is it also different between China and the
West? I think in terms of technology,
I do see that. So there are different kind of
priorities when I when I talk with the developers in the West,
let's take example of USI think their priority is more about how
to develop the best models, how to actually have the as many,
you know, users as possible, how to actually spread and like Dr.
adoption. But in China, I think the focus
is not really about building the best model, but more about
making how to adopt AI as deeply as possible into the economy
across different industries. As I mentioned earlier, 30 AI
2030 aims to boost AI adoption to more than 90% across all the
industries, right? So we'll focus more on how to
use AI, how to deploy AI. So that is a bit different from
the West. And in terms of how people see
AI as in general, people are very, in China, people are very
optimistic and open to this new technology.
And I this partly because of cultural reasons, but also we
see that AI is going to be the best way to solve some issues
like aging population. You don't want to, you know,
rely on having more workers, but you want to make it faster and
more efficient using technology like AI, right?
And in China, because of the favourable policy and also
reliable supply chain, I think it's very likely that we're
going to have the mass production of robots in the
coming years. That will definitely be a great
thing to to to see how that will for people's knives in different
industries, manufacturing, service industries and also even
people's home with human or the robots.
That's very interesting to watch.
I think the like progress in all aspects of how robotic progress
has been made is just incredible of also to follow along in the
Chinese market. You know, we need to follow that
along from a different kind of perspective, but then again,
also of how it's going to be connected to the whole area of
the progress that AI makes in itself.
And I think it's going to be super interesting to follow
along of how both of those worlds also both of those
developments are going to be converging.
But for now, I do want to end our conversation with the
so-called in between moments because these are moments that I
want to have with all of my guests in the end of the
conversation that we've already had.
When it comes to the first questions that I kind of throw
out there, and it's for you particularly, what does trust
and technology mean when it becomes tangible?
So the trust technology becomes tangible through conversation
and connection. And where does China's AI
strength lie in? Definitely in scale and speed.
And how does the West differentiate towards that?
And I would say a differentiate in core technology and
governance. And the geopolitics and tech
perspective, are they friends or first?
Definitely. I think you should be both right
depending. OK, I, I would love to dive into
that right now, but that's not how the moments work.
So I'm just going to throw right out the last question that I
have towards you and it would be one word that you have that
you're currently in between. I hope I can use a sentence
actually. I mean between.
I'm like building the real trusted connections between
China and Europe. And I think it's one of the most
relevant things that you can dive into.
And I'm very grateful to have had you as a guest on the
podcast. Thank you so much for joining us
and joining me on this also deep dive into the way of the
differences that there are on between regions.
And I hope to talk to you soon again.
Thank you so much, Eva. It's really fun and thank you
for having me. It's a pleasure.