China acknowledges ‘temperature gap’ between tech boom and traditional slump

China's Qiushi Journal, a top theoretical journal of the Communist Party, acknowledged a stark economic divide between the country's booming AI sector and struggling traditional industries, describing it as an obvious 'temperature gap' in the world's second-largest economy. The journal argued that rapid technological advances must not leave ordinary citizens behind, noting that the speed and scale of AI adoption had thrown the gap into sharper relief.

China acknowledges ‘temperature gap’ between tech boom and traditional slump As a rapid shift towards cutting-edge tech threatens to leave ordinary citizens behind, a leading journal acknowledges the stark divide and calls to protect livelihoods Frank Chen /author/frank-chen in Shanghai A top theoretical journal of the Communist Party has acknowledged that a stark economic divide exists between China’s booming AI sector and its struggling traditional industries. And while arguing that this divergence was not unique to China, the Qiushi Journal stressed that rapid technological advances must not leave ordinary citizens behind. In a commentary published on its website on Sunday, the journal conceded that there was an obvious “gap in temperature” in the world’s second-largest economy. “Macroeconomic data serves as the economy’s ‘thermometer’, while micro-level experiences represent the public’s ‘feels-like temperature’. Both are real,” the article said. It asserted that such a gap was a long-standing challenge for major economies, noting that “the larger the economic scale, and the greater the number of market participants, the more frequently such a gap appears”. The commentary also said that the speed and scale of artificial intelligence adoption had further thrown such a gap into sharper relief, as China establishes itself in the vanguard of a global race to develop and deploy cutting-edge technology.