'Raise a Lobster': How OpenClaw Became China's Cultural Craze and Economic Movement
In China right now, people are “raising lobsters.” Not the crustaceans — the AI agents. OpenClaw’s logo features a claw (get it?), and Chinese developers have enthusiastically extended the metaphor: nurturing, training, and deploying AI agents is “raising your lobster.” It’s charming, slightly absurd, and tells you everything about how differently OpenClaw’s rise has played out in China versus anywhere else. Fortune published a deep-dive this week on what’s happening, and the numbers are staggering. Token consumption at Chinese AI providers has surged 6x as OpenClaw adoption explodes. Online courses teaching people how to “raise” AI agents are enrolling hundreds of thousands of students. And most remarkably: the Chinese government is subsidizing it. ...