What happened in China Shengshu Technology's Vidu has emerged as a credible, commercially deployed generative video AI platform that is drawing direct comparisons to Runway — one of the most well-funded and widely recognised AI video tools in the Western market. Vidu is not a prototype or a research demo. It is a live product with a structured free tier and paid subscription, actively being benchmarked against Runway by independent filmmakers, content creators, and AI tooling communities. The platform offers 80 free credits per month to free users, who can generate 4-second videos. Paid users unlock 8-second video generation. These are not trivial distinctions — video length and output volume are the primary levers through which creative professionals evaluate whether a tool fits into a professional workflow. What makes Vidu strategically significant is not just that it exists, but the competitive posture it has adopted: newer than Runway, but…