A digital-content company claimed 55% of China's AI tokens go to short dramas and video generation; three state-affiliated outlets pushed back within days, and ByteDance publicly disputed the figure.
'Foreigners use gunpowder to make bullets; China uses it to make firecrackers.' That line, from a 1933 essay by Lu Xun, has been revived to describe the AI gap: the US spends 58% of its tokens coding, China 55% generating short dramas.
What surprised me most is the accounting. A rough calculation from the regulator's published micro-drama output puts released AI dramas at about 7.4% of tokens; reaching 55% would take 75 times as much discarded footage as kept.
The anxiety behind the argument—that entertainment is worth less than productivity—feels far more real than the number.
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