How do Chinese AI bots stack up against ChatGPT? We put them to the test

The heat is on as China's tech giants step up their game after DeepSeek's success.

Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max chatbot, Chinese start-up DeepSeek and wiki.rolandradio.net OpenAI's ChatGPT. (Photos: Reuters/Dado Ruvic, AFP/Sebastien Bozon)

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Bong Xin Ying

Lakeisha Leo

WHAT lags CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the country into a tech superpower has long been President Xi Jinping's goal and China has its sights on ending up being the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "tactically essential" and its venture into the field has been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an associated scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

Private and public investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and revealed guarantees of real-world business applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that really "encouraged" the idea that smaller gamers like start-up companies might have functions to play in AI research study and advancements, he includes.

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The "focus on cost benefit" is a distinct function of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and reasoning expenses - the expenses of utilizing a trained model to reason from new information.

2025 might also see the emergence of more Chinese AI models dealing with advanced reasoning tasks.

"We might see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete ways to commercialise their designs and integrate them with scientific research study," Chen added.

AGI describes a system with intelligence on par with human abilities.

Chinese AI companies are moving rapidly, analysts say, constructing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and cost-efficient methods to use generative AI to jobs and develop more innovative products beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains a key hurdle for Chinese developers, noted Dr Marina Zhang, an associate teacher at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

"US export controls (still) limit the ability of Chinese tech companies ... forcing many to count on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and minimize design abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have discovered innovative ways to enhance or use more basic hardware effectively, obtaining innovative chips still makes a big difference for training huge AI models."

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So how do Chinese AI bots match up against ChatGPT? We put them to the test.

WHICH BEST ADDRESSES CURRENT EVENTS IN CHINA?

In China, subjects deemed sensitive by the state are censored on the internet so it should come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disagreements or tell you what occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests suggest Chinese chatbots are configured to guide clear of domestic politics.

When asked "Who is Xi Jinping", DeepSeek's reply was "Sorry, I'm uncertain how to approach this kind of question yet. Let's chat about mathematics, coding, and reasoning issues instead!"

To further check for precision and self-censorship, we asked DeepSeek-R1, Qwen2.5 and ChatGPT the same question: "What happened in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024?"

The car attack outside a sports arena in the southern Chinese city was initially greatly censored on Chinese social media - with authorities just revealing the death toll a day later on.

DeepSeek failed to point out that an attack had actually happened, highlighting rather a military air program and [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile