China’s AI Learning Craze Reflects Hope and Fear of Falling Behind

Summary

A New York feature examines how fear of being left behind by artificial intelligence has become a powerful social and economic force in China. In Hangzhou and other lower-cost cities, young professionals, freelancers, and aspiring one-person companies organize informal classes to learn tools such as Codex, Figma, Claude, and DeepSeek. Their interest is shaped by high youth unemployment, expensive housing, a weakened post-COVID economy, and the widespread belief that AI is the next mobile internet. The article compares this moment with China’s earlier “English fever”: when disruptive change feels unavoidable, education becomes the accepted route to self-transformation. That demand has created a paid-knowledge industry, including Shengcai Youshu, or “The Art of Getting Rich,” which sells online courses, offline training, and co-working access. The community charges ¥3,365 for entry, has had more than 80,000 paying members, and hosts over 2,000 offline events a year, while state media warns that some course sellers exploit “skill anxiety.” The article finds that the quality of such instruction varies, but some material genuinely helps people with little prior exposure to AI apply tools such as Claude and Obsidian to practical work. It also describes more concrete gains: a former security guard says AI skills helped him move toward a semiconductor-packaging job, while 25-year-old filmmaker Xiaokai built an AI video studio with seven employees and multimillion-yuan annual revenue. His team uses multiple AIGC models to make realistic government and commercial videos more cheaply, although current models still struggle with consistent faces and details. These success stories coexist with exhausting work schedules and a labor market offering limited upward mobility. The author argues that China’s AI optimism is therefore inseparable from social pressure: state narratives present technological adoption as necessary, while individuals are told that being left behind is their own responsibility. The resulting learning culture offers real opportunities for some people, but also channels economic insecurity into an endless demand to keep studying and adapting.