August 5, 2026A top theoretical journal of the Communist Party has acknowledged that a stark economic divide exists between China’s booming AI sector and its struggling traditional industries, reports the South China Morning Post. In a commentary published on its website on Sunday, the journal conceded that there was an obvious “gap in temperature” in the country. “Macroeconomic data serves as the economy’s ‘thermometer’, while micro-level experiences represent the public’s ‘feels-like temperature’. Both are real,” the article said. The commentary also said that the speed and scale of artificial intelligence adoption had further thrown such a gap into sharper relief, as China establishes itself in the vanguard of a global race to develop and deploy cutting-edge technology.