23 Ways You’re Already Living in the Chinese Century
A decade ago, China’s political leaders laid out an ambitious industrial plan: By 2025, they pledged, their country would be a world capital, with the goal of moving from “Chinese speed to Chinese quality, the transformation of Chinese products to Chinese brands.” This is the difference, they wrote, between “Made in China” and “Created in China.”
At WIRED, we never take what the government (ours or anybody else’s) says at face value. Still, as journalists, we respect the ability to hit a deadline. While the president of this country is promising to make America great again as he strips it for parts, Chinese business and political leaders have quietly seized the moment. This is not to say that China’s economy, let alone its repressive totalitarian government, runs perfectly. But today there’s almost no limit to what is created in China, then eagerly consumed by the rest of the world.
WIRED’s reporters have chronicled the transformation in the Made in China newsletter—and now we’re bringing you this special issue. Here are 23 ways China is rewiring the future.
A staggering 200-plus Chinese companies are trying to build humanoid robots. In the US, it’s closer to 16.
- 1. Overview ⌄
- 2. Head ⌄
- 3. Grip ⌄
- 4. Articulation ⌄
- 5. Mobility ⌄
“Nature has been very kind to Donghai,” explains a plaque at the Donghai Crystal Museum. Blessed with rich deposits of clear quartz, this county in eastern China once supplied raw material for Mao Zedong's transparent coffin. Today, thanks to decades of cutthroat capitalist hustle—including an army of 24/7 livestreamers raised by a local Party secretary—Donghai orchestrates the multibillion-dollar global crystal trade. Here’s where that tower of Brazilian amethyst in a London yoga studio, that Colombian quartz on the reception desk of a Miami Botox clinic, and that Zambian citrine in an overpriced tourist shop in Tulum really came from. Read more
3. You’ll gladly drink Franken-milk.
Amount of milk, in pounds, that a cloned "super cow" in China can produce annually—almost double the output of a typical American bovine.
4. That new battery factory down the street? It’s Chinese.
“Made in China” used to be—and still often is—a label for cheap labor, knockoffs, and $5 gadgets. Now it also means state-of-the-art technology assembled anywhere in the world. To illustrate the trend, WIRED mapped the global manufacturing footprint of China’s massive battery industry. In 2024, more than 80 percent of the world’s battery cells were produced in China. Today those companies are rapidly expanding and building factories on nearly every continent.
5. Your American-made EV is lame.
Estimated number of Chinese-made electric vehicles sold in 2025. In that time, the US sold roughly a tenth as many.
7. Your fashion is fast.
Tons of clothing waste produced in a year by China, the largest manufacturer of textiles worldwide.
8. Your genome is at the mercy of a capricious Chinese ex-con.
In 2018, a scientist named He Jiankui revealed that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies. The Chinese government sent him to prison for three years. Now a free man, He relies on private donors to fund his work at a small independent lab in Beijing. WIRED caught up with him as he tries to reestablish himself as “China’s Frankenstein.”
9. You can change history by contributing to a crowdsourced online sci-fi novel.
Ma Qianzhu was unsatisfied with Chinese progress. An engineer at a large state-owned enterprise, he belonged to a generation that grew up believing engineering is destiny, that China’s future would be built, bolt by bolt, by people like him. Then Ma discovered something extraordinary: a wormhole to the late Ming Dynasty. With more than 500 peers, he commandeered a ship and traveled back in time 400 years, to a preindustrial China wracked by foreign invasion and internal decay. Their mission: trigger an industrial revolution in the past that would, in the future, make modern China great (again).
This, strictly speaking, did not happen. It’s the plot of The Morning Star of Lingao (临高启明), a sprawling, collectively written science-fiction web novel that has consumed a corner of the Chinese internet for nearly two decades. It now totals millions of words. It has never been translated into English. Almost no one in the West knows it exists. Read more
10. Fireworks are passé. You want drone shows instead.
World record for most drones controlled by a single computer, at a show in Liuyang last year.
Jade Gu was playing a romantic video game on her phone when she saw Charlie—and fell in love. Being an in-game character, Charlie wasn’t the most available boyfriend. So Gu re-created Charlie as a chatbot. Then she started occasionally hiring a cosplayer to impersonate Charlie on dates with her around Beijing. In China, where women dominate the market for AI companions, Gu is one of many women who are finding creative ways to be in love. Read more
12. Your AI overlords have overlords.
While the European Union inches its way toward comprehensive AI regulation—and the US pretty much twiddles its thumbs—the Cyberspace Administration of China has worked out a more ad hoc approach to oversight: the algorithm registry.
Any company launching an AI tool with “public opinion properties or social mobilization capabilities” must first show the CAC how the product avoids some 31 categories of risk, from age and gender discrimination to psychological harm to “violating core socialist values.”
Over time, the CAC has inadvertently created the most detailed map of a nation’s AI ecosystem anywhere in the world. WIRED looked inside.
13. You think buildings take too long to build.
Hours it takes the Chinese company Broad Group to erect a 10-story building.
15. You care about solar.
Gigawatts of new solar capacity that China—the world's worst polluter—installed in the first half of 2025, more than double the rest of the world.
17. You don’t care if most of the internet is off-limits.
WIRED took a peek over the Great Firewall to see how a billion-plus people fill their home screens. These made-in-China apps are must-haves (because you can’t have anything else).
18. Your kids’ new obsession is a blockbuster animated movie franchise from China.
Is Ne Zha the ugliest main character in the history of animated cinema? The Hunchback of Notre Dame might have him beat, but Quasimodo’s ugliness is ennobling; Ne Zha’s is corrupting. Not only does he have sunken eyes, bad teeth, and the world’s worst haircut, he’s also a complete shit. He throws tantrums. He breaks things. He drops trou and pisses wherever he pleases. The Americans I know who’ve tried to watch either of his two movies shut them off within moments, disgusted.
Not that this little freak needs Americans. Ne Zha II, which came out in China last year, was the first non-Hollywood film to hit $1 billion in a single market. Eventually it doubled that, making it the biggest animated movie of all time. When A24, the hotshot indie studio, picked it up for American distribution, with Michelle Yeoh lending her credibility to the English-language dub, the reaction was: How have I not heard of this? (The first Ne Zha barely registered in America.) Followed by: Why is it so gross? Expand
19. You realize privacy is a pipe dream.
Number of surveillance cameras across China—more than the rest of the world combined.
20. Your taste is Chinese taste.
Increasingly, it’s not imported luxury goods that are popular in China—it’s homegrown items. Here are some of the most quirky trends we’ve spotted recently. Some of them might be showing up in America’s malls. Some never will.
- 1. Li-Ning Shadow Runner 3.0 Sneakers ⌄
- 2. HerBeast Reishi Mushroom Sunscreen SPF50 ⌄
- 3. Huawei FreeClip Open-Ear Wireless Earphones ⌄
- 4. Chagee Ceylon Black Tea Latte ⌄
- 5. To Summer Kunlun Snowmelt Candle ⌄
- 1. Songmont Mini Drippy Roof Bag ⌄
- 2. Meituan Power Bank ⌄
- 3. ZEZE Cat Tree with Scratching Board & Play Structure ⌄
- 4. Lightweight Camping Chair ⌄
- 5. Camel Arctic Sentinel Elite NR99 Paneled 3-in-1 Jacket ⌄
22. You wish you commuted to work on a Chinese train.
Miles in China’s high-speed rail network. America's national rail operator, Amtrak, runs 21,000 miles, almost none of it high-speed.
23. The toy you want most in the world is still a Labubu.
Why did the entire world go mad for a grinning rabbit-gremlin collectible from China? Everywhere Labubu went last year, I went too. I made pilgrimages to stores across four countries. I time-traveled to Hong Kong’s early-2000s underground toy scene. If some of the mania around Labubu has cooled, that's just what the company wanted, its COO, Si De, told me. Pop Mart significantly ramped up production last year, and it cracked down on scalpers, which made Labubus easier to buy.
Still, China’s first big global pop culture hit isn’t going anywhere. Pop Mart has expanded manufacturing to Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Mexico. Sony Pictures has a Labubu feature film in the works. Even Tim Cook has a Labubu now. —Zeyi Yang
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