‘Raising Lobsters’: How OpenClaw Became China’s Hottest AI

Virality and a new AI category

OpenClaw — the open-source autonomous agent created by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger — has gone viral in China, where netizens have nicknamed the craze "raising lobsters" (yang longxia) after the tool’s lobster logo. Unlike prompt-driven large language models such as ChatGPT, OpenClaw is designed to plan and execute tasks autonomously. It reportedly amassed more than 250,000 stars on GitHub within months of its November launch, and users are excited by the shift from simple Q&A to task-oriented automation. But this power comes with a steeper technical hurdle than browser-based assistants.

A services boom and fast followers

Because OpenClaw requires technical setup and configuration, a paid-installation market has sprung up across China — remote help can cost about 100 yuan ($14), in-person deployment up to 1,500 yuan ($218), and some providers reportedly claimed earnings as high as 260,000 yuan in days. Customers range from e-commerce merchants automating listings to media teams and financial analysts. Chinese tech giants have moved quickly: Tencent (腾讯) launched an OpenClaw-like WorkBuddy, ByteDance (字节跳动) introduced a cloud-ready ArkClaw, and smartphone maker Xiaomi (小米) began small-scale tests of its own miclaw service.

Risks, costs and policy response

Experts warn the autonomy brings new risks. Jiang Han of think tank Pangoal says the agent can loop, err, or cause data loss, and it has been reported that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology flagged default or misconfigured deployments as easy attack vectors that could lead to leaks. Running OpenClaw also consumes paid LLM tokens and may require additional software licenses, keeping it primarily a tool for technically savvy users for now. Local governments in Shenzhen, Wuxi and Changshu have already issued incentives — free deployment zones, subsidies up to 1 million yuan and awards for projects — as Beijing courts domestic AI development. Against a backdrop of Western export controls on advanced chips and models, Beijing’s push for homegrown AI alternatives is only likely to accelerate. Is OpenClaw a genuine productivity revolution or a hobbyist phenomenon dressed up in enterprise clothes?