By the mid-2020s, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence have become so frequent that few releases genuinely surprise.
Yet ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 has managed to do just that — not because it wins another benchmark race, but because it reveals something deeper about how a new generation in China is approaching technology.
Seedance 2.0’s ability to generate fluid human motion, natural camera work and director-like transitions quickly drew attention online. Feng Ji, producer of the hit game Black Myth: Wukong, remarked on X that “AI competition is getting crazier.”
But focusing solely on performance misses the bigger story. The real question is not whether ByteDance has outpaced rivals, but what Seedance 2.0 says about the social environment that produced it.
In China today, AI is no longer confined to policy documents as a “strategic technology.” As the country prepares for its 15th Five-Year Plan, AI is increasingly treated by younger users as something to play with, remix and experiment with, often in public.
In the days following Seedance 2.0’s release, Chinese social media platforms were flooded with user-generated content. Some creators reimagined characters from Plants vs. Zombies with cinematic movement; others turned household cats into giant creatures roaming modern cities.
Many blended AI-generated visuals with traditional Chinese aesthetics. The range of styles and ideas was striking, helping explain why China’s recent advances in AI have been so visible.
In this case, innovation is happening not only in labs, but also across platforms where experimentation is fast, messy and collective.
Policy has played a role, but not in the way outsiders often imagine. China’s 2025 guidelines for deepening the “AI Plus” initiative emphasized integration across industries rather than prescribing creative outcomes.
The result has been an environment where experimentation is generally tolerated, even if boundaries remain. Many users in their 20s and 30s now use tools like Seedance 2.0 for narrative projects, music visualization, virtual characters and short films.
Some outputs approach what was once considered cinematic quality, despite their creators having no formal filmmaking training. Rather than lowering creative standards, this wave of amateur production has broadened the range of what creative expression can look like.
This stands in contrast to how AI is often discussed in the West. There, public debate tends to focus on job displacement, copyright disputes and existential risk, with lawyers, regulators and technology executives dominating the conversation.
In China, by contrast, many younger users encounter AI first as a creative instrument rather than a threat. This does not mean anxiety is absent, but the starting point is different — shaped by platform-based innovation and a generation accustomed to testing new tools openly.
The shift is also visible in China’s AI talent structure. Over the past two decades, the center of gravity has moved from academic research to real-world application. From multimodal models to generative content tools, young engineers, researchers and creators increasingly drive development.
In 2000, Chinese scholars published just 671 AI-related papers. By 2024, that figure had risen to 23,695, surpassing the combined output of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
A 2025 report by recruitment platform Zhilian Zhaopin found that 80% to 90% of applicants for core AI roles in China were under 35. Seedance 2.0, then, is less a singular breakthrough than a reflection of this broader generational shift.
It also helps explain why recent Chinese AI developments have not remained domestic curiosities. From DeepSeek’s rapid rise in early 2025 to Seedance 2.0’s international attention at the start of 2026, these tools have generated discussion far beyond China’s borders.
China still faces real constraints, particularly in advanced hardware and regulatory refinement. But for many young creators, such limitations function less as deterrents than as constraints to work around.
Whether this creative momentum can be sustained — especially as commercial pressures and global tensions intensify — remains an open question. What is already clear, however, is that China’s next phase of AI development may be shaped as much by how its youth choose to use technology as by the technology itself.
Yanni Wu is a Beijing-based political commentator and contributor to Chinese and international media. She writes for Modern Diplomacy, Friends of Socialist China and others.
