Illustration: VCG

When taking selfies, users are often frustrated by insufficient lighting. In China, a developer named Chen Yunfei acutely sensed this demand among users and completed an initial version of an app called CatLight in around an hour thanks to artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted coding.

Priced at 1 yuan ($0.14), the app has garnered around 1 million downloads. However, Chen said he had no prior coding experience before venturing into AI entrepreneurship. Without the assistance of AI tools, he noted, he would not have been able to complete the app alone, and the process might have taken several months even if relying on team collaboration.

Chen's entrepreneurship story marks an example of the "shoucuo" economy. The term shoucuo originates from the gaming community as a slang term that refers to completing high-difficulty actions or tasks without resorting to shortcut keys, cheats, hacks, or auxiliary tools. Today, empowered by AI technology, "shoucuo" refers to creative production and tasks being completed without relying on professional equipment or production lines, instead using manual operation or simple tools.

Growing trend

Recently, there have been numerous examples of personal creativity being transformed into products by leveraging AI technology, and a group of lightweight tools similar to CatLight has emerged.

For example, the latest hit Chinese app "Sileme," which translates into "Are You Dead," is a lightweight safety tool where users need to set emergency contacts and check in daily. If a user fails to check in for 48 consecutive hours, the system will automatically send an email alert to their contacts. Developed by three post-95s in just one month using a "shoucuo" approach, the app's development cost was just over 1,000 yuan, according to a report on the People's Daily WeChat account on Sunday.

Liu Gang, chief economist of the Chinese Institute of New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Strategies, told the Global Times on Monday that in order to meet the new type of solo entrepreneurship in the AI era, his team has developed a system that is currently under internal testing to assist users in generating text and code.

With the popularization of this low-cost, high-flexibility innovation model, new entrepreneurial trends such as "one person companies" (OPCs) and "small team-based companies" are emerging, and a new era of innovation and entrepreneurship seems to have arrived, Liu said, noting that the new format creates broader space for individual entrepreneurship and injects powerful momentum into China's high-quality economic development.

Besides playing a role in the software field, the integration of AI with mature industrial chains has also given rise to a unique phenomenon of "shoucuo" in the manufacturing sector. On Douyin, the topic of "shoucuo" everything has garnered around 6.3 billion views as of press time on Monday.

Some video producers upload videos showing homemade versions of WALL-E (the robot from the movie WALL-E) shopping on the street, others make Harry Potter wands that can control smart home devices, and some rent basement garages to set up labs and livestream the process of making robots.

Supportive ecosystem 

To adapt to the emergence of OPCs, Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province recently launched an action plan to build a leading hub for an AI OPC entrepreneurship ecosystem for 2026-27. According to the plan, the total area of OPC communities across the city will exceed 500,000 square meters by 2027, forming an AI OPC entrepreneurship ecosystem characterized by resource aggregation, clear functions, industrial clustering, and organic linkage, according to a document on the local government's website.

On January 15, a One Person AI Entrepreneur platform was launched in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province. Adopting the new entrepreneurial model of "one person + AI," the platform builds a deeply integrated innovation system by integrating core elements such as computing power, data, and technology, which represents an important practice of AI-powered innovation and entrepreneurship, according to the local government.

Meanwhile, this sector is attracting inflows of capital. According to market data, the financing amount for domestic "shoucuo" economy-related entrepreneurship reached 3.2 billion yuan in 2024, up 187 percent year-on-year, with AI tools, smart hardware, and cultural and creative consumption emerging as the three hottest tracks, domestic financial media outlet the Securities Times reported.

"From a corporate management perspective, the leapfrog advances in large AI models will inevitably drive a revolution in intelligent services. Today, large AI models demonstrate a deep understanding of information ecosystems, which provides developers who operate as solo entrepreneurs with revolutionary tools at the level of information processing," Chen Jing, a vice-president of the Technology and Strategy Research Institute, told the Global Times on Monday.

In addition, the synergy between AI and the service capabilities of China's manufacturing sector is forming a resonance, like an accelerating flywheel, creating unprecedented growth conditions for OPCs, Chen said. 

For example, language was once a barrier for Chinese manufacturers to connect with the world, but now small commodity merchants in Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang Province, can livestream directly to overseas audiences, automatically translating Chinese into corresponding languages. Therefore, for OPCs to truly mature, they require both the "soft power" endowed by AI and the "hard power" supported by China's strong manufacturing capabilities, he said.

Recently, with the "shoucuo" economy in the ascendant, the other side of the coin is gradually emerging. Some apps quickly generated by AI, although they gained popularity briefly, were later delisted.

"Speed" is a dividend from AI, but "stability" is the cornerstone of product survival, according to a People's Daily report. Without a deep understanding of core business and strict quality control, "shoucuo" products generated by AI are unlikely to withstand the long-term test of the market, it said.