{"id":31159,"date":"2025-07-06T04:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T04:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31159"},"modified":"2025-07-06T04:23:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T04:23:39","slug":"the-coder-village-at-the-heart-of-chinas-a-i-frenzy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31159","title":{"rendered":"The Coder \u2018Village\u2019 at the Heart of China\u2019s A.I. Frenzy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and dozens of people sat in the grass around a backyard stage where aspiring founders of tech start-ups talked about their ideas. People in the crowd slouched over laptops, vaping and drinking strawberry Frappuccinos. A drone buzzed overhead. Inside the house, investors took pitches in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

It looked like Silicon Valley, but it was Liangzhu, a quiet suburb of the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou, which is a hot spot for entrepreneurs and tech talent lured by low rents and proximity to tech companies like Alibaba and DeepSeek.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople come here to explore their own possibilities,\u201d said Felix Tao, 36, a former Facebook and Alibaba employee who hosted the event.<\/p>\n

Virtually all of those possibilities involve artificial intelligence. As China faces off with the United States over tech primacy, Hangzhou has become the center of China\u2019s A.I. frenzy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A decade ago, the provincial and local governments started offering subsidies and tax breaks to new companies in Hangzhou, a policy that has helped incubate hundreds of start-ups. On weekends, people fly in from Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen to hire programmers.<\/p>\n

Lately, many of them have ended up in Mr. Tao\u2019s backyard. He helped found an A.I. research lab at Alibaba before leaving to start his own company, Mindverse, in 2022. Now Mr. Tao\u2019s home is a hub for coders who have settled in Liangzhu, many in their 20s and 30s. They call themselves \u201cvillagers,\u201d writing code in coffee shops during the day and gaming together at night, hoping to harness A.I. to create their own companies.<\/p>\n

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It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and dozens of people sat in the grass around a backyard stage where aspiring founders of tech start-ups talked about their ideas. People in the crowd slouched over laptops, vaping and drinking strawberry Frappuccinos. A drone buzzed overhead. Inside the house, investors took pitches in the kitchen.It looked like Silicon Valley, but it was Liangzhu, a quiet suburb of the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou, which is a hot spot for entrepreneurs and tech talent lured by low rents and proximity to tech companies like Alibaba and DeepSeek.\u201cPeople come here to explore their own possibilities,\u201d said Felix Tao, 36, a former Facebook and Alibaba employee who hosted the event.Virtually all of those possibilities involve artificial intelligence. As China faces off with the United States over tech primacy, Hangzhou has become the center of China\u2019s A.I. frenzy.A decade ago, the provincial and local governments started offering subsidies and tax breaks to new companies in Hangzhou, a policy that has helped incubate hundreds of start-ups. On weekends, people fly in from Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen to hire programmers.Lately, many of them have ended up in Mr. Tao\u2019s backyard. He helped found an A.I. research lab at Alibaba before leaving to start his own company, Mindverse, in 2022. Now Mr. Tao\u2019s home is a hub for coders who have settled in Liangzhu, many in their 20s and 30s. They call themselves \u201cvillagers,\u201d writing code in coffee shops during the day and gaming together at night, hoping to harness A.I. to create their own companies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31161,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31159"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31162,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31159\/revisions\/31162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}