China has positioned itself as a global tech powerhouse by hosting two landmark events in late July and early August 2025. From July 26 to 28, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) returned to Shanghai, convening over 800 companies and showcasing more than 3,000 AI technologies under the theme “Global Solidarity in the AI Era”. Just days later, from August 1 to 3, China Joy transformed the city into a playground for gaming, digital entertainment, and cutting-edge extended reality (XR). Together, these twin gatherings offered a vivid snapshot of how fields once seen as separate—immersive entertainment and artificial intelligence—are now intersecting to reshape consumption, industry and culture.To get more news about news from china, you can citynewsservice.cn official website.

At WAIC 2025, the buzz moved beyond grand concepts into real-world execution. Industry titans rolled out next-generation large language models (LLMs) and humanoid robots that weren’t just on display but actively working. Tencent introduced Hunyuan 3D World Model 1.0 for crafting spatially accurate virtual realms, while SenseTime unveiled SenseNova V6.5, boasting significant reinforcement-learning improvements. Alibaba premiered the latest large multimodal model in its Qwen AI lineup, tailored specifically for intelligent automotive cockpits. Meanwhile, the Qwen team made waves by open-sourcing foundational models such as Qwen3, along with specialized variants for code generation and cinematic video creation via the Wan 2.2 suite. Official translation partner iFlytek demonstrated SparkDesk X1’s real-time math-solving, multilingual dialogue and code-generation capabilities, underscoring how AI is migrating from labs to boardrooms, hospitals and living rooms alike.

Just a few blocks away at Shanghai New International Expo Center, AStation took center stage at China Joy with a bold XR proposition: “Make outdoor space a digital interactive stage.” From “Mountains and Seas Space” to “Tyrannosaurus Park,” “Legend of the Immortal Sword,” “Alien Museum” and “Hardcore Mech Armor,” five major themed experiences transported visitors through history, mythology and sci-fi landscapes. Instead of passive viewing, each XR zone emphasized agency—participants could extend their left hand to summon interface icons, then flick their right hand to transition instantly between scenes. This playful, intuitive interaction design evokes the notion of “digital genes” embedded into physical surroundings, rewriting how people perceive and inhabit space.

What stands out in AStation’s approach is its shift from static presentation to dynamic, multisensory engagement. A single gesture could whisk a user from an ancient forest filled with roars of dinosaurs to a black water town haunted by specters, then let them climb up from an underground cavern into the heart of a sword-wielding immortal saga—all within seconds. The scene changes are not merely visual tricks but deeply immersive narratives that blur the line between theater, gaming and interactive art. Attendees reported a profound sense of presence and wonder—proof that XR technologies have matured from curiosities to full-fledged cultural platforms.

Beyond spectacle, both WAIC and China Joy offered a glimpse into tangible industry applications. Tourism bureaus, educational institutions and commercial developers have already expressed strong interest in deploying XR experiences for heritage site preservation, classroom immersion and branded entertainment. At the same time, financial services have begun to verticalize AI offerings. For example, Ant Digital Technologies unveiled Agentar-Fin-R1—an LLM optimized for banking, insurance and asset management—after demonstrating top-tier performance on benchmarks like FinEval 1.0 and FinanceIQ. This model addresses the finance sector’s strict requirements for reasoning accuracy, regulatory compliance and data security. According to IDC, China’s market for generative AI platforms in financial services is projected to reach 3.5 billion yuan by 2027, nearly five times its size in 2024.

The simultaneity of these developments underscores a broader trend: the fusion of physical, digital and cognitive realms. XR environments demand intelligent content generation, while AI applications benefit from richer, spatially anchored user interfaces. As these domains merge, companies will need integrated strategies that harness immersive storytelling, context-aware computing and verticalized intelligence. Shanghai’s 2025 tech showcase suggests that the next phase of innovation won’t be defined by pixels or algorithms alone but by ecosystems that weave together presence, personalization and precision.

Looking ahead, industry watchers expect to see hybrid events that combine large LLM demos with on-site XR installations, enterprise pilots that deploy finance-centric AI agents inside interactive metaverse classrooms, and cross-sector partnerships aimed at crafting new business models. China’s dual events this summer were more than separate celebrations of XR or AI—they were a prelude to an era where seamless experiences bridge the digital-physical divide and where intelligence is everywhere, evolving in concert with space itself.