The Coder ‘Village’ at the Heart of China’s A.I. Frenzy

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It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and dozens of people sat in the grass around a backyard stage where aspiring founders of tech start-ups talked about their ideas. People in the crowd slouched over laptops, vaping and drinking strawberry Frappuccinos. A drone buzzed overhead. Inside the house, investors took pitches in the kitchen.

It looked like Silicon Valley, but it was Liangzhu, a quiet suburb of the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou, which is a hot spot for entrepreneurs and tech talent lured by low rents and proximity to tech companies like Alibaba and DeepSeek.

“People come here to explore their own possibilities,” said Felix Tao, 36, a former Facebook and Alibaba employee who hosted the event.

Virtually all of those possibilities involve artificial intelligence. As China faces off with the United States over tech primacy, Hangzhou has become the center of China’s A.I. frenzy.

A decade ago, the provincial and local governments

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