A trip to Hangzhou, the birthplace of DeepSeek

The quadruped robot has been brought out through the company’s back door for a demonstration. At 123 pounds, it’s made of titanium alloy and has an AI-powered brain that’s capable of identifying terrain and adapting its movements accordingly. The robot is utilized for rescue operations, security and logistics work, as well as policing duties.

The robot climbs steps, walks through mud, scampers up to hedges. Visitors take photos. Several of them are businessmen who are interested in buying one. One observer — whose company plans to buy it in order to carry out surveillance work in an industrial park — tests its endurance by giving it a tremendous kick: the robot takes a couple of steps back, but doesn’t flinch. The scene takes place in a park next to a canal. Some locals, including a woman pushing a baby in a stroller, stop to admire it.

These are the kinds of things you can see in Hangzhou, a city of almost 12 million people on China’s east coast. It’s the new, local, Silicon Valley.

The city, located in Zhejiang province, has gained prominence as a technological hub since the emergence of DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence company whose model competes head to head with OpenAI, at a much lower cost.

DeepSeek has pure Hangzhou DNA: its founder, Liang Wenfeng, graduated from Zhejiang University, which has its campus in the city. Years later, in 2023, he established his corporate headquarters here.

Hangzhou’s techno-business drive is noticeable from the moment you arrive at the station via bullet train: a huge panel shows the location of the parking lot for DiDis (the Chinese version of Ubers), which travelers have ordered on their cell phones. Numerous technological giants have flourished here, such as the e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba or the internet services company NetEase. Their presence has helped give rise to an ecosystem that has an abundance of young people dedicated to technology. And this has, in turn, promoted the birth of a new wave of local companies, dubbed in the Chinese press as the “Six Little Dragons.” These promising start-ups include DeepSeek; the video game studio Game Science, creator of the successful Black Myth: Wukong; the brain-machine interface BrainCo, as well as the firm specializing in quadruped robots, Deep Robotics, whose machine has just moved around the park.

Deep Robotics has a very similar history to that of DeepSeek. It was founded in 2017, also by two former students of Zhejiang University. It now has around 200 employees… and an order list for robots that they cannot keep up with, according to Zhang Yatao, the company’s director of foreign sales. He doesn’t offer EL PAÍS an exact figure. “It’s confidential,” he notes, “because we have close cooperation with the government.”

Zhang places the university campus among the key reasons for the city’s development. “Without this, it’s not possible to [build high-level] technology.” He compares it to the ETH in Zurich (where Einstein was a student and teacher), and MIT. Others compare it to Stanford, the quarry of Silicon Valley. The university, according to some Chinese rankings, is the third-most prestigious in the country. In 2023, it was ranked sixth in the world in the index of research institutions put together by the academic journal Nature. It stands out in terms of providing technological degrees. And it’s not only known for research, but also for promoting the implementation of ideas through companies.

To this, Zhang adds, must be added the support provided by the local government administrations. “At the beginning, it was very difficult: there was no profit, no office, no factory…” While he speaks, in the demonstration room, several of his robots walk among the visitors. The secret, he says, is the firm’s motion control algorithm. “It means that [the robot] can detect the environment. It recognizes mountains, stairs, the terrain…”

A routine is programmed for the robot: a circuit that goes from point A to point B. And, from there, it does its job on its own. It’s not difficult to imagine future wars between similar robots. Alternatively, perhaps they could use their cuddles to fill nursing homes with joy.

This headquarters, Zhang continues, was rented from the local government at very low prices in the first few years. The company also received aid to promote itself overseas, by sending employees to international fairs. And the city, he concludes, has a less stressful pace of life than Beijing, Shanghai, or Shenzhen. In these megacities, the technology sector has also boomed, but the cost of living has skyrocketed. Hence, Hangzhou is attractive to young people. “Here, it’s possible to find a balance between work and life,” he affirms. “And the city is very beautiful.”

Hangzhou is huge. There are tourist-packed areas, with old-fashioned neighborhoods and a dreamy lake, as well as modern areas with glass and steel towers and young people sipping coffee. Last year, it was voted number one on the Milken Institute’s index of the best-performing Chinese cities. The report highlights its evolution from a tourist attraction to an e-commerce hub, driven by the Alibaba Group, one of the world’s largest online retail companies. The index also cites Hangzhou’s diverse industrial landscape, the “considerable” investments in science and technology, as well as the “the constant flow of high-quality talent” provided by Zhejiang University.

Since DeepSeek’s emergence, it has also become a destination for bloggers and curious visitors. One of them — who is starting a technology publication — is standing in front of an office building called Galaxy International. The AI company is based on one floor, but the security guards are firm: “Nobody is allowed to visit.” So, the blogger, who admires the city’s technological model, continues his route to the headquarters of Unitree, another humanoid robot company.

The founder of DeepSeek had only given two interviews before the U.S. stock market crash he caused this past January. Now, he’s revered among China’s technology gurus. In mid-February, he was received by President Xi Jinping in a rare meeting with businessmen from the technology sector. The top leader promised them his administration’s support, but also asked them for a patriotic commitment.

Restrictions and innovation

China’s technological commitment is notable from the top-down. Beijing perceives that this area represents a significant part of the race between superpowers (China and the USA). Washington has been pushing the Asian giant with technological restrictions since Donald Trump’s first term. DeepSeek has been a source of national pride, in part because it has continued developing new technology despite this external pressure. “Wherever there’s a blockage, there’s progress; wherever there’s repression, there’s innovation,” quipped Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday, March 7, when he took questions about DeepSeek during a press conference. Hangzhou is a central part of the communist authorities’ strategy: “Innovation is the main driving force of development,” Prime Minister Li Qiang affirmed, during a visit to Hangzhou in December of 2024.

“It’s an innovative city and it’s nice for young people,” says Xiao Yuan, 25, as he eats fish meat with chopsticks. He speaks with EL PAÍS while sitting in a restaurant in a neighborhood called Future Sci-Tech City, which houses numerous companies among parks with names like “Three Dimensional Future Park.”

Xiao Yuan isn’t his real name. He prefers to hide it, because the company he works for — a top-level technology company, one of those that has problems with the United States — doesn’t allow employees to speak with the press. He’s a mathematician, an expert in algorithms. And his company, which is headquartered in another city, has several thousand workers in Hangzhou.

He currently earns around 30,000 yuan ($4,100) a month. He lives with his girlfriend not far away from the restaurant. And the conversation is interesting: he talks about three-dimensional space recognition using lasers, as well as the coming industrial revolution of AI.

After lunch, while walking between the skyscrapers, with a coffee in hand, he comments on the U.S. restrictions: “In the short-term, they can slow down China’s development… but in the long-term, it’s not necessarily bad, because it can force China to make innovations.”

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