China With black-rimmed glasses, Vita, an 8-year-old boy in Shanghai, logged into an online programming channel as a teacher.

Vita in August set up a programming guide on Bilibili, China's online video streaming platform, and has so far attracted nearly 60,000 followers and over a million views.

"Programming is not easy, but not too difficult, at least not as people imagine," Vita said. On his channel, he patiently guides students, mostly older, through a programming app called Swift Playgrounds.

Sometimes, Vita deliberately makes mistakes, helping students to see common mistakes to avoid. "Teaching others is also a way for me to learn new things," he said.

Vita is among Chinese children who learn to code even before elementary school. This trend is spreading increasingly strongly based on the belief of parents that programming skills are extremely necessary for Chinese teenagers, because the government is promoting technology development.

Beijing in 2017 issued a plan to develop artificial intelligence (AI), which proposes teaching programming in both elementary and secondary schools. The country published its first AI textbook last year. Zhejiang Province even put this subject on the college entrance examination.

Zhou Ziheng, Vita's father, a freelance translator specializing in science and technology books, is the editor of videos and helps run his child's channel. He started teaching his children how to code when he was 5 years old. "I learned programming from a young age, so I always believed that it was normal for Vita to take this subject at that age," Zhou explained.

When Vita was 4, they started by playing some programming-related games, using symbols to replace code. After realizing that his son was very good at playing, Zhou decided to expose the boy to real code.

In the summer, Vita surprised his father by successfully rewriting the code of an inactive application he updated himself. "I suggest you write down instructions on how to write these codes," Zhou said. The idea of online classroom came out of that.

Most of the comments under Vita's videos expressed his surprise that he could code and even teach others at such a young age. "When I was 8, I just learned how to use a computer," one person said.

Unlike the Vita family, parents who cannot afford to send their children to programming classes are booming thanks to demand from the middle class in China. They want to equip the best skills for their children in line with the trend.

According to data from Analysys, a Chinese internet analytics company, the market value of the country's programming for children's education in 2017 reached 7.5 billion yuan (more than a billion dollars), according to data from Analysys. to exceed 37.7 billion yuan (5.3 billion USD) by 2020.

"In Chinese public schools, programming is taught very late compared to developed countries. Therefore, our overtime classes make up for this shortage," said Pan Gongbo, general manager of middle school. Tongcheng Tongmei programming teaching center based in Beijing, said.

The youngest student at this center is only three. For children under the age of 6, the center offers a special program, which includes activities such as building Lego, the game also uses programming knowledge and skills.

According to Pan, children 6 or 7 years old can fully learn programming in cognitive development. "Don't underestimate the rate at which children learn. In some of our courses, children learn even faster than adults," Pan said.

10-year-old boy Ji Yingzhe has been learning Python programming language at the center for half a year. Earlier, Ji also took a semester on basic robot construction, the knowledge that the boy felt was too simple. "The code is already written and all you have to do is arrange the blocks in order," Ji said.

Ji's father decided to take his son to learn programming because the boy spent too much time playing video games. The newly established rule is that Ji can only play games he creates himself. To date, Ji is about to complete a simple version of the popular game "Plants and Zombies".

In November, Vita participated in a programming contest for elementary school students organized by the Shanghai Computer Association. The boy spent two months studying the C ++ programming language with his father's support, then progressed to the finals even though he was one of the youngest contestants.

Zhou said the future depends on Vita's passion and ability, but he wants his son to be humble. "I told him 'he still hasn't done anything significant'. This is just a step in the programming learning journey," he said.

Meanwhile, Vita shared that owning many followers and fans was enough to make him happy. "Programming is a long-term challenge. But people can download the application and start learning now," the boy said.