Economic Watch: "Claw-powered" one-person companies become hot topic at China's "two sessions"

BEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- "Raising lobster" and one-person companies (OPCs), which have sparked heated discussions in China's AI community and among the public, are also hot topics at the country's ongoing "two sessions" this year.

The term "raising lobster" originated from the open-source AI agent OpenClaw, which uses a red lobster as its icon. It has since become a buzzword, adopted by Chinese users to describe the process of setting up and training this smart assistant.

In the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, the fervor is impossible to miss -- hundreds of enthusiasts have lined up outside Tencent's headquarters to get the agent installed.

Many Chinese tech companies have since jumped on the trend, unleashing their own "lobsters." Tencent hatched QClaw, Minimax introduced MaxClaw, Moonshot AI unveiled KimiClaw, and Alibaba joined the feast with CoPaw.

Ding Hong, a national political advisor and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the emergence of these AI agents enables ordinary people without coding backgrounds to develop usable apps in a short time.

The "claw-powered" businesses focus on fostering prolonged interactions with AI agents to build up their memories and operational logic. This process gradually transforms them into "super assistants" capable of managing workflows like conversation processing, email dispatching, and content creation. Individuals can leverage these AI agents to accomplish tasks that would normally require an entire team.

"This has given rise to the entirely new OPC model, becoming a vibrant new form of smart economy. The OPCs will be a long-term trend reflecting a massive transformation in the division of labor and the basic units of economic activity," Ding added.

This year's government work report has stressed the need to create "new forms of smart economy" for the first time. It calls for faster application of new-generation intelligent terminals and AI agents, large-scale commercial application of AI in key sectors and fields, and the cultivation of new forms and models of AI-native business.

"AI Plus" is also anchored in the draft outline of China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), which is currently under deliberation at the "two sessions."

Under the country's top-level strategic design, entrepreneurs are quick to adopt cutting-edge technologies, eager to seize the emerging business opportunities, while local governments are readily fueling this commercial urgency.

Wu Qingwen, a national legislator and mayor of Suzhou City in east China's Jiangsu Province, said that AI agents like OpenClaw and Alibaba's CoPaw are hugely convenient for startups. Suzhou has been committed to becoming the top city for OPCs and is deliberating relevant supportive measures for OPCs in this field.

Suzhou is not alone in this initiative. On March 7, Shenzhen's Longgang District introduced the nation's first policy framework specifically focused on OpenClaw and OPC development. This effort was soon echoed by Wuxi's high-tech district and Changshu, a satellite city of Suzhou, both located in Jiangsu province.

Ling Chun Kit, a national political advisor and founding chairman of Chinese Young Entrepreneurs Association in Hong Kong, noted that AI has significantly lowered the barriers to entrepreneurship and the cost of trial and error, allowing individual innovation to be fully unleashed. At the same time, OPCs are often more sensitive in capturing the needs of niche markets.

However, Ling also said that as an entirely new corporate form, OPCs still face issues such as unclear intellectual property ownership of AI-generated content.

Qi Xiangdong, a national political advisor and chairman of cybersecurity firm QAX Group, also warned that granting excessive data permission to AI agents introduces security risks, including data security exposures, inadequate cyberattack protection, and security issues in digital public services.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has recently issued a warning that some OpenClaw-powered deployments carry high security risks when in default or improper configuration, making them highly susceptible to cyberattacks, information leakage, and other security issues. ■