The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
China Decode: The U.S. vs China AI Battle Is Getting Ugly
28 Apr 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Now we've got the White House accusing China of industrial-scale theft of intellectual property from U.S. AI labs. This is different. And on the China side, we've got the Chinese government banning the acquisition by one of America's biggest companies, Meta, of a promising AI company that was founded in China but is now based in Singapore.
I would say all of this to me means that the rivalry has entered a new phase.
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Chapter 2: What are the escalating tensions between the U.S. and China in AI?
So There does seem to be a lot going on in the background. The U.S. seems to be really getting tough, maybe in the shadows. Maybe Trump will be out there in front making nice with the Chinese and the mood music around the summit will be fairly friendly. But I think the true trajectory of the relationship continues to be bad.
One thing that I will end on that was raised in a conference I attended in Beijing just the other day, what we have discussed is the use of AI in military applications. I think there's real concern from Beijing's side about autonomous weapons that have been used more recently in Iran. So that could resurface as a discussion.
Certainly, it was part of a strategic dialogue that had just been rehashed towards the end of the Biden administration. And potentially, you know, in the bull case scenario about the relationship, if this summit goes well, that could pave the way for more strategic dialogue about autonomous weapons controls. But I'm not holding my breath.
That was just raised as an issue by the Chinese side that could come to the forefront again. Okay, we'll be back with more after a quick break. Stay with us.
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Chapter 3: What accusations has the U.S. made against China regarding AI?
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Welcome back. And while China is racing ahead in AI and expanding its financial footprint, there's a very different story playing out on the ground.
Across cities from Shanghai to Shenzhen, a strange new industry has popped up, pretend-to-work offices, where young people are literally paying something like $7 a day to just sit at a desk, take meetings, and send photos home to prove they actually have a job.
On one level, it sounds absurd, but it's really a window into a deeper problem, a tough job market, especially for young people, and a culture where unemployment still carries real shame and stigma. So instead of sitting at home, some are choosing structure, routine, and frankly, dignity, even if it is staged. And when you zoom out, it creates a striking contrast.
At the top, China is projecting strength, cutting-edge artificial intelligence, a rising currency, global ambition. But underneath it all, there is a generation struggling to find its footing in an economy that's not delivering the same opportunities as their parents experienced.
James, when I was looking at some of the videos of these pretend-to-work offices, my first reaction, and I have to say this facetiously, is kind of like WeWork. Back in the day, people would just come into these co-working spaces, arguable, debatable as to whether or not they were working.
And then when I dig deeper into it, there was this company in particular called Hangzhou, I believe Hangzhou Pretend to Work Limited, run by Mr. Chen. And it seems that a lot of the people who work in the space are kind of like freelancers, they're content creators. So maybe it's not fair to say that they're pretending to work. And that it's all fake.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of China's new AI model from DeepSeek?
I think quite a lot of people go to these places because everybody else there knows that they haven't got a job and they'd like to have a job. And so they're almost like advertising their joblessness. And, you know, obviously some people are there pretending to work. But yeah, I mean, what struck me about this trend is that it's quite widespread.
You find these pretend to work offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, places like Taiyuan, Dongguan, all kinds of cities across China. I'm not going to say it's a massive number of people, but I must say it does remind me very much of
the time I spent in Japan in the early 90s, when you would find quite a lot of salarymen who'd lost their jobs getting up every morning, putting on their suit and tie, and going to a local library to basically sit there all day because they'd been laid off, but because they felt so ashamed that they couldn't admit it to the rest of their family.
So I think there's a little bit of that sense here. I didn't get the same sense of shame in this particular dynamic. But one thing struck me, one journalist who went there was going around and There is some humor in these places, too. For instance, in one of the offices in Beijing, there was a door marked Chairman's Office.
But when you opened it, you opened it and only found the fire escape going outside. So I suppose it was a bit of a play on that the chairman doesn't exist. Obviously, I think the reason why we chose this topic is because it shows an angle on one of China's biggest problems, social and economic, and that is the way in which young people, 16 to 24-year-olds, are finding it really hard to get jobs.
The latest number is among this cohort, 16.9% were unemployed, unable to find a job in March. And if you ask me, based on the conversations I was having in China, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that number really starts to rise now. You must have had very similar conversations during your trip, Alice.
Yeah, what I actually did hear is that there have been moves by Beijing to pressure universities to increase, you know, the degrees by a year so that students stay on campus a little longer. There's just a bit of pressure on SOEs to do these stages, to do these internships for a period of time in order to get some youth into the workplace as well.
So this is coming at a time where I think Gen Z in China are really struggling to get a job, and that's having broader cultural, sociological implications. We've talked in the past about Tangping, you know, this idea of lying flat and not being aggressive or ambitious about work. And certainly I think this pretend-to-work culture somewhat fits into that.
in the sense that these people want to cosplay working, but they don't really want to go out or fail to go out and find real jobs. And so this is the closest alternative that they get. But it really, I think, hits on the nail on the head in terms of a lot of these themes that we've talked about in the past. What was interesting to me is that the Global Times actually even acknowledged this trend
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