Lobsters are literally everywhere in China right now – on and offline. For example, in February, entrepreneur and tech influencer Fu Sheng hosted a livestream showing off OpenClave’s capabilities, which received 20,000 views. And just last weekend, Xie participated in three separate OpenCloud events in Shenzhen, each attended by over 500 people. These self-organized, informal gatherings feature power users, influencers, and sometimes venture capitalists as speakers. On March 7, Zee attended the largest event, attended by over 1,000 people; He says, people were standing shoulder to shoulder in the packed venue, many attendees could not even find a seat.
Now China’s AI giants are also starting to buck this trend, promoting their own models, APIs, and cloud services (which can be used with OpenClave), as well as their own OpenClave-like agents. Earlier this month, Tencent held a public event offering free installation assistance for OpenClaw, which led to long lines of people waiting for help, including elderly users and children.
This sudden surge in popularity has even inspired local governments to get involved. Earlier this month the government of Longgang, a district in Shenzhen, issued a number of policies to support OpenClause-related enterprises, including free computing credits and cash rewards for exceptional projects. Other cities, including Wuxi, have also introduced similar measures.
These policies only catalyze what is already in the air. “It wasn’t until my father, who is 77, asked me to help him install ‘Lobster’ for him that I realized this thing really went viral,” says Henry Li, a Beijing-based software engineer.
a programmer gold rush
What makes this moment especially attractive for people with technical skills like Feng is that many people want OpenClause, but many don’t have the ability to access it. Installing it requires a level of technical knowledge that most people don’t have, from typing commands into a black terminal window to navigating an unfamiliar developer platform. In terms of hardware, an older or budget laptop may struggle to run smoothly. And if the tool is not installed on a device separate from one’s everyday computer, or if data accessible to OpenClaw is not properly partitioned, a user’s privacy may be at risk – opening the door to data leaks and even malicious attacks.
