appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Ann Cao

Shanghai, China’s financial and tech hub, is aiming to foster over 200 open-source projects over the next two years as part of the city’s ambitious road map to build a world-class ecosystem amid the heated AI race with the US.
By 2027, the city would see the establishment of one to two “internationally influential open-source communities”, along with 100 companies focused on related technologies and over 200 high-quality open-source projects, according to an action plan unveiled on Thursday by the Shanghai municipal government.
The total number of developers involved in the open-source communities is expected to reach over three million by that time, it added.
Several frontier sectors – including AI, intelligent chips and high-end software – would become major areas of focus for the initiative. The city also planned to launch China’s first open-source platform targeting overseas markets next year.
The ambitious plan was put forward by a few municipal agencies, led by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, the body in charge of boosting technology development in the city.

The initiative, which aims to make Shanghai “a nationally competitive source and development hub for open-source innovation”, reflects how the city is positioning itself as the vanguard of China’s push for tech self-reliance.
Shanghai is headquarters for a number of AI model developers, including MiniMax and SenseTime, as well as AI chip developers such as Biren Technology and Enflame.
The latest aspirations from Shanghai come as the Chinese government is doubling down on its open-source strategy, especially in AI, to cut reliance on US technologies and foster domestic innovation amid the US-China tech war.
The Shanghai municipal government said it would boost open-source platforms with resources such as pre-trained models, training data sets, development tools and AI applications, to meet the needs of the entire chain from development to training, testing, hosting and operation for AI models.
China’s bet on open-source models has already helped it become a key player in the global AI arena, led by the efforts by start-up DeepSeek and Alibaba Group Holding. Open source allows public access to a software program’s source code, allowing third-party developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities. Alibaba owns the Post.

China’s open-source AI models may have caught up or “even pulled ahead” of their US counterparts in capabilities and adoption, according to a recent report by Stanford University. These “good enough” models with higher degrees of “openness” compared with US models offered practical advantages such as reproducibility and efficiency, especially in less computationally resourced parts of the world, it added.
As part of its open-source plan, Shanghai will also make efforts to push forward the adoption of RISC-V chip architecture, with the goal of building related toolchains covering compilers, simulators and operating system adaptation tools.
RISC-V, the fifth generation of the open-sourced Reduced Instruction Set Computer architecture for processors, is free for anyone to use and modify and has been seen as one of China’s best hopes for achieving chip self-sufficiency.


How Hong Kong’s old businesses are adapting to new times

Amid many thorny issues with China, Trump pushes to rename AI as superintelligence

Why US chip controls took a back seat at the Xi-Trump summit

Trade truce extension aside, was AI the real Xi-Trump summit breakthrough?

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Shanghai to double down on open-source projects amid push for AI, chip self-sufficiency

Crowds at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on July 28, 2025. Photo: AFP

An illustration photo shows the MiniMax logo on a smartphone screen. Photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

In this photo illustration, Alibaba’s Qwen AI logo is displayed on a smartphone with the DeepSeek logo in the background. Photo: Shutterstock Images

China’s AI toy boom: Huawei, JD.com, UBTech make big push into growing sector

Huawei Technologies’ Smart Hanhan marks the latest foray by Chinese Big Tech companies into the growing global AI toy market. Photo: Huawei

A boy holds an AI-powered toy robot. Photo: Getty Images

Smart Hanhan plush AI toys from Huawei Technologies. Photo: Huawei

Nvidia aims to start H200 AI chip shipments to China by mid-February, sources say

Significant uncertainty remains, as Beijing has yet to approve any H200 chip purchases. Photo: Shutterstock

A high-performance server equipped with Nvidia’s H200 graphics processing units seen at an event in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. Photo: Shutterstock

Tech

Tech War

News

China Future Tech

Shanghai is headquarters for AI model developers MiniMax and SenseTime, as well as AI chip developers such as Biren Technology and Enflame


Shanghai is headquarters for AI model developers MiniMax and SenseTime, as well as AI chip developers such as Biren Technology and Enflame.


Shanghai to double down on open-source projects amid push for AI, chip self-sufficiency

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Shanghai is headquarters for AI model developers MiniMax and SenseTime, as well as AI chip developers such as Biren Technology and Enflame

Shanghai is headquarters for AI model developers MiniMax and SenseTime, as well as AI chip developers such as Biren Technology and Enflame