Dreams of rebirth: revisiting China's AI imaginaries in the post-DeepSeek era

This study examines how Chinese AI practitioners construct sociotechnical imaginaries around AI development in China amid intensifying the U.S.–China technological competition following DeepSeek's emergence in early 2025. Based on expert interviews ( N = 33), podcast analysis ( N = 65), and fieldwork across Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong, we find that DeepSeek's breakthrough catalyzed a reconfiguration of imaginaries across national, organizational, and individual scales: renewed confidence in China's capacity for technological advancement despite geopolitical constraints, revived technological idealism centered on young startup teams, and a reclamation of individual agency among entrepreneurs and tech workers. We conceptualize this emergent configuration as rebirthism—a historically situated sociotechnical imaginary emerging from Chinese technological development and cultural narratives through the demystification of the Silicon Valley supremacy and remystification of domestic innovation.