2025 is officially the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.
A fancy title, sure, but it reflects something big.
Around the world, scientists and governments are betting that quantum computing could be the next leap after the internet, AI, and even classical computing itself.
If a normal computer is like counting on your fingers, a quantum computer is like playing a piano. All notes at once, not one at a time.
Instead of bits, which are either 0 or 1, quantum computers use qubits, which can be both at the same time.
That means they can handle problems so complex that even the world’s biggest supercomputers choke on them.
For China, this field isn’t new.
The first national research team kicked off back in 2003.
What started as a small academic project has now turned into a race with real momentum – and one name keeps coming up: Origin Quantum Computing Technology based in Hefei.
From lab dream to global stage
The turning point came on January 6, 2024, when Origin Quantum switched on Origin Wukong – China’s first third-generation superconducting quantum computer built entirely in-house.
It wasn’t just a lab demo. Within a year, Origin Wukong had quietly completed more than 320,000 computing tasks for 18 million users across 139 countries. For a country once catching up in computing power, that’s a serious debut.
In the words of Guo Guoping, deputy director at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the project’s lead scientist:
“The computing power gap between the abacus and existing computers is the same as the computing power gap between existing computers and quantum computers.”
That’s a bold comparison, but he’s not exaggerating.
Origin Wukong uses a 72-qubit superconducting chip known as the Wukong Core. Add in 126 coupler qubits, and the machine totals 198 qubits.
Each qubit can stay stable for up to 15 microseconds, a big deal in the quantum world, and Wukong can run up to 200 quantum circuits at once, while many global peers can only handle one.
And it’s not just hardware.
Wukong runs on Sinan 3.0, China’s first home-grown quantum operating system. It manages tasks in batches, juggles workloads, and coordinates resources like a digital orchestra conductor.
Then, in April 2024, Wukong got an upgrade: China’s first Post-Quantum Cryptography “Anti-Quantum Attack Shield.”
That means it can defend itself from other quantum computers, the cyber equivalent of wearing armour in a sword fight.
So when Origin Quantum sold Wukong’s computing power overseas in November 2024 (the first time China’s quantum power had gone global), it was a statement.
As Zhao Xuejiao, deputy director of the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center, put it:
“Foreign companies purchasing China’s independent quantum computing power is a recognition of China’s quantum computing technology strength by the international market.”
From aerospace to finance, and even medicine
Quantum computing is already showing up in industries where traditional computing has hit its limits.
Take aerospace and automotive engineering. Designers need to simulate airflow around planes and cars, but those simulations take forever on normal machines.
On October 25, 2024, Chinese scientists pulled off the world’s largest quantum fluid dynamics simulation using Origin Wukong. Published in an international engineering journal, it proved that China’s home-grown quantum systems aren’t just academic toys – they can solve real-world, high-precision problems.
Then there’s finance. Using quantum algorithms, Origin Wukong can crunch through market data to optimise portfolios and forecast risks.
Its latest achievement, a distributed quantum portfolio optimisation system, does what would take classical computers massive resources to achieve, all while consuming far less energy.
And perhaps the most human impact of all, biomedicine.
Origin Quantum’s technology now supports drug discovery, toxicity prediction, and protein-structure modelling.
In one standout project, Origin Quantum teamed up with Bengbu Medical University to bring quantum computing into breast-cancer diagnosis.
By combining quantum algorithms with deep learning, they developed an imaging tool that can detect and classify mammograms faster and more precisely than before.
It’s the first time Chinese-made quantum power has entered medical diagnostics, a milestone with real-world consequences.
The rise of China’s “quantum chopsticks”
But hardware is only half the story.
The real long-term bet is on people. Quantum computing isn’t plug-and-play; it needs talent, training, and new ways of thinking.
That’s why China’s building what insiders call the “Chinese chopsticks” model – a home-grown education ecosystem for quantum talent. Instead of following Western templates, China is writing its own playbook.
Since the Ministry of Education added Quantum Information Science as a major in 2020, 13 universities have joined the program, and over 60 universities now use Origin Quantum’s learning systems in their labs.
The quiet revolution
Quantum computing is still early. It’s noisy, expensive, and messy – a bit like the internet in the ’90s. But what’s clear is that China is no longer standing on the sidelines.
From exporting Origin Wukong’s power overseas to applying quantum algorithms in medicine, finance and engineering, Origin Quantum is building infrastructure for the next era of computation.
The abacus once defined a generation. Classical computers defined another.
The next chapter, it seems, is being written in qubits, and Origin Quantum is holding the pen.
