Is China’s DeepSeek moment a chance to transform into an ‘open-source nation’?

Beijing should ease excessive regulation and administrative intervention in AI sector to promote more tech innovation, experts say

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Overregulation has pushed China’s best tech minds overseas, hindered domestic innovation, and widened the country’s tech gap with the US, according to a new article by a Chinese think tank. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:26pm, 3 Feb 2025Updated: 7:40pm, 3 Feb 2025

With little-known Chinese start-up DeepSeek sending shock waves through the global AI industry, it is time for Beijing to overhaul regulations in the tech sector to boost innovation and retain more talent as its rivalry with the United States grows, according to experts.

Policymakers should place more emphasis on the institutional conditions that incentivise tech disrupters and promote a more open environment for innovation, according to an article published by a Chinese think tank on Sunday.

The authors said China’s long-standing “heavy regulation mindset” had led to poorly formulated measures that were not suited to a still-developing technology industry.

The authors include Jiang Yuhao, a researcher with the Institute of Public Policy, an independent think tank under South China University of Technology, and Jia Kai, an associate professor at the school of international and public affairs at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Such obstacles pushed the country’s best tech minds overseas, hindered domestic innovation, and widened China’s tech gap with the United States, resulting in the need for substantial “deregulation”, they said in the article, which was published on the think tank’s WeChat account.

“If we do not [push for more openness], we may end up ‘forcing’ the unicorns and other high-quality companies we have nurtured to move to the US, which could widen the gap between us and the US even further,” the authors wrote.

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