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Deep focus: Behind the booming 'handcrafted economy,' ordinary creators turn AI side projects into viable ventures_我的网站
A | AI摘要
八旬老人陈某因失火罪入狱，鼓山地区检察院审查其悔罪表现及监管条件，经公开听证建议假释。
Still frame from an AI-generated short video depicting the Chinese-style "heavenly court" created by creators Qiguang and Xueli Xianzong (screen names) Photo: Courtesy of QiguangWhat if one person and a computer could create something that wows the world?
Meet Qiguang, a 1991-born eyeglasses store owner whose AI-generated Chinese celestial realm racked up 5 million views overseas.
He is part of a rising movement in China: the "handcrafted economy," in which low-cost AI technologies and creativity are opening a new path to entrepreneurship.A white jade corridor stretches deep into a sea of clouds. The towering celestial palace rises above tiered upturned eaves, and red-crowned cranes glide between floating sanctuaries.
Shared online by viewers without subtitles or dialogue, this AI-generated short video racked up more than 5 million views across overseas social platforms in less than four days, attracting audiences worldwide.
Many overseas viewers assumed the atmospheric visual sequence came from a professional film studio or seasoned 3D animation team.
However, its creator, known online as Qiguang, leads a far more ordinary life. Born in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, in 1991, he now runs a physical optical shop. In his spare time between serving the customers, he taught himself AI image and video generation, painstakingly crafting the viral vision of a Chinese celestial realm.
Qiguang's overnight international fame is no isolated internet success story. It signals the spread of a new trend dubbed the "shoucuo" economy or handcraft economy. The term describes the process of bringing ideas to fruition by hand on a small scale with simple tools, relying mainly on individual skill or manual labor rather than dedicated industrial production lines.
On Chinese social media, the hashtag "Hand-Crafting Everything" has surpassed 100 million views. In app stores, solo developers are launching AI-powered tools that compete directly with products backed by tech giants. This movement, defined by low costs, high creative freedom and flexible, fragmented workflows, is reshaping the national imagination of entrepreneurship.
Two people, one vision of heavenFew viewers of Qiguang's viral celestial video realized that behind its ethereal beauty stood not a studio of dozens, but just two people, and hundreds of discarded AI attempts.
Qiguang told the Global Times that he had long been fascinated by the grand, ethereal landscapes of Chinese mythology - the celestial palaces and floating realms described in ancient texts. Then he discovered the work of another creator, Xueli Xianzong (screen name), whose AI-generated visuals captured a distinct Eastern aesthetics and minimalist blank-space composition.
"I realized AI could break down the barriers for ordinary people," Qiguang said. "The images I'd held in my mind for so long could finally become visible."
Xueli Xianzong had arrived at a similar realization earlier. For years, he had wanted to visualize the celestial palaces of Chinese fantasy fiction, but traditional 3D modeling and live-action filming were prohibitively expensive for an individual. AI generation tools changed that. He began spending his free time learning text-to-image and image-to-video technologies, carving out a niche in the relatively obscure genre of Chinese fantasy visuals.
The two eventually became creative partners, though their collaboration is unusually loose.
"Mostly we create independently, then share our finished work for critique and inspiration. We absorb aesthetic ideas from each other's visuals and incorporate them into our own," Xueli Xianzong said. "This is how most creators in this space collaborate right now."
But if their creative partnership was remarkably uncomplicated, their struggle with AI itself was anything but straightforward. The process behind a video like "Chinese Heavenly Court" is far more painstaking than audiences have imagined. Qiguang broke it down: First, conceptualize the overall atmosphere and frame each shot's camera movement. Second, use an AI image generation tool to generate high-quality static images for each frame, endlessly tweaking prompts to control architectural details, color palettes, lighting and composition. Third, feed the selected images into AI video-generation models to add dynamic lens effects, like horizontal camera panning, drifting clouds, flowing sleeves. Fourth, sort through the output, discard distorted or broken footage, edit the clips together and finally choose music to match the mood.
"AI frequently produces garbled architecture, deformed figures or unnatural motion," Qiguang said. "You envision something perfect in your mind, but after dozens of generations, you still haven't transformed your vision into reality."
After two years of self-learning, Qiguang regards his biggest breakthrough as escaping generic mass-produced ancient Chinese aesthetics. To him, the handcraft economy differs fundamentally from traditional entrepreneurship at its starting point.
"You can begin with just one person and a single computer, turning ideas directly into content or products. Heavy upfront investment disappears, yet every tedious task, every round of trial and error falls solely on the creator," Qiguang said.
"The AI-assisted handcraft model removes many steep technical barriers. If you possess taste and imagination, you can experiment in your spare time," he noted with a beam of proud.
Guo Yi, a professor at the School of Journalism, Chongqing University, told the Global Times the handcraft economy can be more accurately described as "intelligent creation economy" or "geek creation economy": Human intellect directs computing power, and creativity guides automated tools. In many ways, the movement mirrors the global maker economy.
"Yet generative AI brings transformative changes beyond merely lowering entry costs for creative industries. It is restructuring cost frameworks and production relationships across creative sectors," Guo said.
A fast-growing community 
A visitor inquires about AI-powered entrepreneurship solutions at an industry fair hosted by local authorities in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on March 15, 2026. Photo: VCGIf Qiguang and Xueli Xianzong build dreamlike visuals in the creative clouds, 34-year-old Xu Ting "handcrafts" practical digital products grounded in real demand.
Xu still vividly remembers, in January 2025, publishing a simple post on the social media platform Xiaohongshu: "I want to build an AI app that chats with elderly users and helps them compile life memoirs. Anyone want to join?"
Under conventional internet industry logic, the idea sounded unrealistic. Developing an app once required large teams and millions of capital. But AI rewrote these rules.
Xu previously worked in the energy sector with no coding background. Using domestic large language models including DeepSeek, she assembled a working product prototype block by block. Without dedicated product managers or UI designers, she single-handedly completed market research and product design.
"In the past, many good creative concepts were abandoned simply because their costs were too high. Today, AI has driven down model token costs, making experimentation accessible to ordinary people and drawing growing numbers of newcomers into this space," Xu told the Global Times.
The day after her recruitment post went live, a flood of private messages confirmed genuine market demand.
Li Ning, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, pointed out that traditional entrepreneurship demands heavy investment in research, staffing, supply chains and market testing, discouraging many innovators.
"AI compresses these costs. Small teams working through independent handcrafted development can achieve outputs that once required hundreds of workers. This has also given more people the courage to start their own businesses." Li said.
Beyond gaps in costs, "handcrafted" teams follow different organizational and collaborative frameworks from established enterprises. Li told the Global Times that inside major companies, projects are pushed to deliver steady, foreseeable returns from conception through rollout. This type of environment creates barriers for disruptive ideas to flourish. Handcrafted teams, however, benefit from their lean size: They can shift direction quickly and iterate through constant trial and error.
"This has also given more people the courage to start their own businesses," he said.
Xueli Xianzong identified four core distinctions between the handcrafted economy and traditional entrepreneurship: low barriers to entry; creativity as the core while tools remain carriers; flexible collaboration without formal incorporation or fixed teams; and low trial-and-error costs, allowing creators to explore niche verticals without financial ruin.
According to Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of China's internet giant Alibaba, as of November 2025, nearly 23,000 AI applications have been built within the innovation zone on its ModelScope open-source platform, and roughly 95 percent of them were developed by individual creators.
Data from the "2026 China One Person Company (OPC) Industry White Paper" and sector reports show more than 16 million registered OPCs across China, as of April 2026.
Navigating headwinds for the creatorsYet if AI has flattened the technical playing field, what truly determines success? For those riding the wave of the handcrafted economy, the AI era offers a double-edged promise: unprecedented freedom to turn ideas into reality, paired with formidable obstacles that test resilience at every turn.
For Qiguang, it is the ability to perceive beauty: innate aesthetic judgment and imagination.
Xu argues that the most vital asset for new entrants is not capital, but sharp insight into unmet real-world needs. "AI excels at execution. Figuring out what to build is far harder than building it," Xu said.
The true competitive edge lies in translating technical capability into tangible user value. "Identify genuine underserved demands and turn technological capacity into value for users. Technology determines whether you can build a product. Understanding users, patience for iterative refinement and long-term trust determine how far a micro-venture can travel," she noted.
But even with the right instincts, the path from idea to market is anything but smooth. The explosive growth of handcrafted products brings steep challenges on that journey.
Xueli Xianzong noted AI enables cheap copying and imitation, while individual creators face exorbitant legal costs to defend their works. When infringement costs remain far lower than enforcement costs, creative enthusiasm inevitably fades.
Beyond intellectual property, creators must escape overreliance on fleeting online traffic. Qiguang observed platform algorithms tend to prioritize snappy, conflict-driven short content, while slow, culturally rich expression struggles to gain traction. He refuses to churn out formulaic commercial drama series chasing view counts, choosing instead to deepen grand storytelling.
"The handcrafted economy is no shortcut to quick wealth. It demands patience through periods of little reward," Qiguang said, noting that new participants need sufficient time and a willingness to endure repeated trial and error.
From an app development perspective, Xu highlighted another tension: balancing customized service and standardized workflows. If every project relies entirely on manual handcrafted labor, founders risk being trapped in high-intensity, low-profit self-employment. The sector needs mature workflows, delivery benchmarks and pricing frameworks. Tasks suitable for standardization can shift to AI, while human empathy and critical judgment stay central. Privacy and ethical safeguards also grow critical, especially for services handling personal memories and sensitive information.
Guo views inconsistent quality standards as typical growing pains, which market filtering mechanisms will gradually resolve. Delayed intellectual property frameworks and emerging governance challenges, however, require thoughtful ongoing policy attention, he said.
Authorities across China have begun rolling out supportive measures to address these obstacles. Over 20 cities have launched targeted policies for OPCs. The Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area offers streamlined business registration services for solo entrepreneurs, delivering business licenses in as little as 30 minutes. Qingdao in East China's Shandong Province rolled out a specialized platform for solo entrepreneurs, delivering end-to-end support for AI innovators from technical development to revenue generation.
At the same time, a network of OPC communities has taken shape. As of May 2026, 426 such communities operate across 28 provincial-level regions and 65 cities. These hubs provide physical workspace alongside networking events, resource matching and mentorship, connecting previously isolated solo creators into a connected ecosystem.
Still frame from an AI-generated short video depicting the Chinese-style "heavenly court" created by creators Qiguang and Xueli Xianzong (screen names) Photo: Courtesy of QiguangNow, Qiguang continues running his optical shop full-time, pursuing AI creation only as a side project with no immediate path to full-time work or large-scale earnings. Both Qiguan and Xueli Xianzong say they will consider full-time creative work only when industry conditions and monetization models mature further. Still, they view handcrafted creation merely as a starting point rather than a final destination, and remain optimistic that this grass-roots creative movement holds vast untapped potential ahead.
Huo Minhan contributed to this story 。法院裁定准予假释，检察官回访确保社区矫正落实，体现宽严相济司法温度。
日前，鼓山地区检察院检察官驱车前往闽清县，到83岁老人陈某的家中回访。堂屋里，陈某紧紧握着检察官的手，连声道谢。原来，就在数月前，这位耄耋老人还身陷囹圄，一度以为自己的晚年将在高墙内度过。而一份假释裁定，改变了老人的命运。 山火引祸
高龄老人服刑遇困境
2023年3月，陈某在闽清山中的田间焚烧杂草时，不慎引发森林火灾，导致大片生态林惨遭焚毁，生态环境遭到破坏。案发后，他主动投案自首，积极赔偿被害人损失并缴纳生态修复金，取得了谅解。尽管刑法规定，已满75周岁的人过失犯罪的，应当从轻或者减轻处罚，然而因触犯失火罪且造成大片生态林焚毁，陈某最终被判刑入狱。 入狱后，陈某因年老多病，长期羁押于老病残中队，考核积分难以达到减刑条件。按照正常程序，他回家的日子遥遥无期。 转机始于今年4月21日监狱发出的一份征求检察意见函。
B | 当厚厚的案卷摆在鼓山地区检察院检察官面前，一行行案情记录让办案团队陷入深思。陈某主动赔偿被害人的转账记录、被害人亲笔签下的谅解书、足额缴纳的生态环境修复金凭证……检察官翻阅一页页卷宗，“打捞”关键细节证据。 “一名年过八旬、过失犯罪、已积极赔偿、真诚悔罪的老人，法律能否为他铺就一条归家之路？”这不仅是一次常规的案件审查，更是一场法理与情理相融的司法实践探索，检察官陷入思考。 公开听证
法理相融开启归家路
为了核实老人家庭的真实情况，检察官们没有止步于“纸面审查”，他们联合监狱民警，驱车前往闽清乡村的陈某户籍地，进行实地走访。老人的家庭是否有帮教条件？家属是否愿意做保证人？司法所能否落实监管？一项项核查，一条条落实。 经过与福州市中级人民法院、监狱的多轮沟通研判后，检察机关认为：陈某高龄体弱、系过失犯罪、无前科劣迹，且已积极修复社会关系与生态损害，人身危险性较低，符合“没有再犯罪的危险”的法定情形，具备假释的法定条件。
C | 今年4月26日，鼓山地区检察院专门组织召开公开听证会。政协委员、听证员及监狱办案人员围绕“是否符合假释条件”“监管帮教是否可行”等问题，进行了充分质询和讨论。最终，听证员一致同意对陈某提请假释的监督意见。
D | 随后，福州市中级人民法院依法裁定，准予陈某假释。 暖心回访
宽严相济彰显司法温度
裁定下达后，检察官的工作并未结束。日前，他们联合监狱民警再次踏上进村山路，上门对陈某进行回访。
E | 坐在陈某家的堂屋里，检察官和陈某面对面谈心：“社区矫正的规定要遵守，日常报到不能忘，违法违规的后果要清楚……”同时，检察官叮嘱家属照顾好陈某的身体和生活。 “真的谢谢你们，让他能回家，我们全家都安心了！”对于能从高墙里假释回家，家属们非常感慨。
F | 从提请到审查，从听证到裁定，再到回访，一条完整的监督链守住了法律底线，也为八旬老人铺平了归家之路。鼓山地区检察院相关负责人表示，这是该院“鼓山·熹望”品牌建设的体现，也是对宽严相济刑事政策的具体实践：对过失犯罪、老病残、家庭特殊困难的罪犯依法从宽，不让年龄和病痛成为被法律遗忘的角落；同时，对案件事实、证据标准和法定程序从严把握，确保每一个环节都经得起检验。（记者 杨玉娟）。
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