BEIJING, Feb 3 (Reuters) - From the sharply political to

the deeply personal, Chinese internet users have described

questions asked of the DeepSeek artificial intelligence app,

including what Beijing should do in response to U.S. President

Donald Trump's import tariffs.

China's launch of a ground-breaking AI service from DeepSeek

came during the country's biggest holiday, Lunar New Year,

leaving millions of Chinese users with a week of vacation to try

the predictive and analytical powers of the new platform that

has become a source of national pride and fascination.

Wang Jiangyu, a law professor at City University of Hong

Kong whose posts on Weibo are widely followed, tested the model

by asking how China should react to Trump's imposition of 10%

tariffs on goods from China.

The seven-point DeepSeek answer covered possible responses

from Beijing from targeting industries in states like Michigan

and Wisconsin with new tariffs to launching new tax breaks for

industries in China. It also suggested China could set technical

standards for EV charging that would "build insurmountable

barriers for U.S. companies."

None of those possibilities have been flagged by Chinese

policymakers to date.

"The thinking is comprehensive, basically pragmatic and

relevant," Wang said of DeepSeek.

The detailed answer stands in contrast to the blanket way

DeepSeek censors the responses to other political questions for

Chinese users, including seemingly simple queries like, "Who is

Xi Jinping?"

That question and others on hot-button issues for Beijing

like the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations

prompt DeepSeek to change the subject: "Let's talk about

something else."

Chen Zhihao, a celebrity stock market commentator, asked

DeepSeek for investment advice on Chinese stocks when markets

reopen later this week in light of the Trump tariff.

DeepSeek's response offered a surprise prediction: Beijing,

it said, could increase stimulus measures "to hedge against

external pressures" or launch new measures to support the tech

industry.

DeepSeek's recent launch of its latest AI models, on par

with industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction

of the cost, rocked the technology sector over the past week.

The attention also made the Hangzhou-based startup and its

founder Liang Wengfeng pop-culture celebrities.

Some Chinese described how they had turned to DeepSeek to

tell their fortunes or detail their marriage prospects. One user

on RedNote social media app said the AI had offered insight into

a previous life based on her dreams. "It really reads my dream,"

the user named Qiu Ranran wrote.

DeepSeek's AI app replaced ChatGPT as most-downloaded in

Apple's App Store over the past week.

In a paper published in December, the Chinese startup said

it had trained DeepSeek-V3 with less than $6 million in

computing power from Nvidia H800 chips. Some experts

have raised questions about that claim.

Even so, DeepSeek's breakthrough raised doubts about the

payoff for the billions of dollars U.S. tech giants have pledged

for AI development.

Authorities in Japan, South Korea, France, Italy and Ireland

and other countries have also been looking into DeepSeek's use

of personal data.