China’s platform economy is an AI deployment engine. The U.S. is still looking for its own

(Zoë Moore, Lyla Renwick-Archibold – Council on Foreign Relations) On May 20, Alibaba released MuleRun, an “always-on AI workforce” that taps AI agents (mules) to safely run code and automate tasks. MuleRun is Alibaba’s polished response to the agentic AI craze triggered in March by OpenClaw, an open-source agent harness that allows users to easily build personal AI assistants that run commands on their behalf. OpenClaw’s adoption catalyzed the newest wave in AI, driving competition between U.S. and Chinese tech companies to deploy and scale agentic consumer and enterprise applications much more capable than chatbots. OpenClaw was open sourced as Clawd in November 2025, and adoption skyrocketed in March. Usage in China nearly doubled that in the United States in mid-March, with 85,000 active instances in China and 48,900 in the United States according to SecurityScorecard. At the height of the craze, hundreds of people lined up outside of Tencent headquarters in Shenzhen for engineers to install OpenClaw for them. Some early adopters even quit their full-time jobs to install OpenClaw freelance: one Beijing-based programmer’s side gig grew to over 100 employees and 7,000 orders within weeks. However you define and score the “AI race” between the United States and China, analysts broadly agree that if there will be a “winner,” it’ll be whoever can adopt the latest AI at scale. In China, cutthroat platform competition, a regulatory imperative to adopt AI, and a growing technologically savvy user base drive deployment at a scale and speed without parallel in the United States. – How China Turned Its Platform Economy Into an AI Deployment Machine | Council on Foreign Relations