Mainland China’s Entire Population Is “Raising Lobsters”

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[People News] These past two days, what people have seen outside Tencent Tower in Shenzhen on the mainland are not food delivery riders, but men and women of all ages lining up for several kilometers with laptops in their hands. They are not there for job interviews. They are there to “raise lobsters.”

That is right. The hottest technology label of 2026 is this red OpenClaw. Because its logo looks like a lobster, all of China is now swept up in the craze of “raising lobsters.” From helping you reply to emails and write code, to helping you automatically file taxes and claim discount coupons, this “lobster” has become everyone’s digital double.

But just as everyone is installing it like crazy, even giving rise to a new profession called “AI installer,” the official attitude is extremely subtle: on one side, local governments are rolling out subsidies and supporting it wildly; on the other side, central ministries are issuing repeated warnings and maintaining a high state of alert.

Why, for the authorities, is this “lobster” an extremely sharp double-edged sword?

First of all, this lobster is the “nuclear weapon” for the authorities to achieve so-called technological self-reliance and self-strengthening in the “15th Five-Year Plan.” In the past we said AI was only for chatting, but OpenClaw is an “agent” — it can really do work. Imagine this: if tens of millions of small and micro businesses across China each had a “lobster” that understands finance, marketing, and multiple languages, the boost to national productivity would be leap-like. This is why Longgang District in Shenzhen rushed to introduce the “Ten Lobster Measures” in subsidies.

But on the other side, the mainland authorities are most worried about two things. First is the loss of data sovereignty. Raising a lobster is not a simple installation. It requires you to hand over the “highest level of authority” on your computer. It needs to read your emails, look at your calendar, and operate your bank account. If people in key positions are all “raising lobsters,” core government affairs or secret data may leak through vulnerabilities in open-source code to overseas servers.

Second is the shock to social order. When “AI installers” are earning tens of thousands a month, traditional administrative clerks and junior assistants will lose their jobs in batches. If this kind of technology-driven “structural unemployment” happens too quickly, can the social security system absorb it? Especially when China is already facing a huge unemployment wave.

In addition, if the lobster makes a mistake while operating automatically — signing the wrong contract or transferring money to the wrong account — who exactly bears the legal responsibility?

At present, the Chinese Communist Party authorities’ posture is: “They fear you will not use it, yet also fear you will use it recklessly.” For the Chinese Communist Party, things it cannot control are the most dangerous. So “raising shrimp is easy, controlling shrimp is hard” may become the core issue of social governance in China in 2026.