Chinese online reactions to the students’ pleas ranged from sympathy to amusement, Schadenfreude to national pride. Some commenters highlighted the perceived privileges enjoyed by exchange students in China, while others pointed to the clamor for Quark AI as a sign that Chinese AI tools have finally become cutting edge. Others noted the similarities between these recent “Quark AI refugees” and the millions of so-called “TikTok refugees” who joined RedNote earlier this year when a U.S. ban on TikTok seemed imminent. (After U.S.-China bilateral trade talks in Spain this weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the two nations had reached a framework deal to divest TikTok’s ownership from Chinese parent company Bytedance.)
fredag 19. september 2025
Translation: International Students in China Complain, “Quark AI Has Forgotten Us!”
Some international students in China have taken to social media platform RedNote (Xiaohongshu) to complain about being excluded from obtaining free educational accounts for Quark AI, an LLM tool widely used by their Chinese university classmates. Using the hashtag #WeStudyInChina, these students have also set up an online “message wall” to lobby for inclusion in the popular AI tool.
Chinese online reactions to the students’ pleas ranged from sympathy to amusement, Schadenfreude to national pride. Some commenters highlighted the perceived privileges enjoyed by exchange students in China, while others pointed to the clamor for Quark AI as a sign that Chinese AI tools have finally become cutting edge. Others noted the similarities between these recent “Quark AI refugees” and the millions of so-called “TikTok refugees” who joined RedNote earlier this year when a U.S. ban on TikTok seemed imminent. (After U.S.-China bilateral trade talks in Spain this weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the two nations had reached a framework deal to divest TikTok’s ownership from Chinese parent company Bytedance.)
Chinese online reactions to the students’ pleas ranged from sympathy to amusement, Schadenfreude to national pride. Some commenters highlighted the perceived privileges enjoyed by exchange students in China, while others pointed to the clamor for Quark AI as a sign that Chinese AI tools have finally become cutting edge. Others noted the similarities between these recent “Quark AI refugees” and the millions of so-called “TikTok refugees” who joined RedNote earlier this year when a U.S. ban on TikTok seemed imminent. (After U.S.-China bilateral trade talks in Spain this weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the two nations had reached a framework deal to divest TikTok’s ownership from Chinese parent company Bytedance.)
