High Capacity How China is Riding the Open Source Wave
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Mar 10, 2026 
Kevin Xu, founder of Interconnected Capital and former head of global expansion strategy at GitHub, guides a fast-moving tour of China’s open source evolution. He traces grassroots roots to corporate and government adoption. He highlights the DeepSeek moment, the OpenClaw frenzy, and why Chinese firms deploy hosted open tools so quickly.
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Open Source In China Is Deeply Historical
- Chinese open source growth is decades-old and not an overnight phenomenon.
- Kevin Xu traces China’s open source roots back to the mid-1990s and links current AI releases to that long history.
Alibaba's DIOE Campaign Built Alibaba Cloud
- Alibaba's DIOE campaign forced the company off IBM/Oracle/EMC and birthed Alibaba Cloud.
- Alibaba replaced Oracle with MySQL customizations to scale Taobao and cut costs, a bet-the-company move that paid off.
Programmers' Day And 996.ICU Shaped Developer Culture
- Chinese developer subcultures formed visible rituals like 1024 Programmers' Day and political labor pushback via 996.ICU on GitHub.
- 1024 celebrates engineers; 996.ICU rose to 200k stars and influenced China's Supreme Court ruling on overtime legality.