No, what happens is consciousness instantiated the whole setup: natural language, Chinese language, syntax, the room, computation, dictionaries, lookups, etc.

No, what happens is consciousness instantiated the whole setup: natural language, Chinese language, syntax, the room, computation, dictionaries, lookups, etc. The whole thing is a giant computation. Yet computations are as mundane (lifeless) as an abacus or pen and paper. It is just wrong to thing the abacus is conscious. Same for the room.