Well first of all, China is a huge country with four times the population of the US or three times of the EU. The greatest "trick" that they have is that they c

Well first of all, China is a huge country with four times the population of the US or three times of the EU. The greatest "trick" that they have is that they count as one country. It would look different if they were a continent made up of a dozen (still pretty big) countries. I used to work at a Chinese research institute (in a non ML-field) and the team leader took some time and frequently encouraged his students to learn ML, to try to apply it to their work or just for the sake of it. He was very open about the fact that it would benefit the nation, but that also ML researchers were in good demand and it would be great for the student's individual careers. So yeah it is mainly just a very popular topic over there, too. But in addition, I feel that China (the gov/party/research community, whoever) thinks more strategically than for example the EU.