Vita has set up a coding tutorial channel on the Chinese video streaming site Bilibili since August and has so far garnered nearly 60,000 followers and over one million views.

He is among a growing number of children in China who are learning to code even before they enter primary school.

The trend has been fuelled by parents’ belief that coding skills will be essential for Chinese teenagers given the government’s technological drive.

“Coding’s not that easy but also not that difficult – at least not as difficult as you have imagined,” says Vita, who lives in Shanghai.

The little boy uses his channel to patiently take his students who are mostly children older than him and young adults — step-by-step through an Apple-designed coding app called Swift Playgrounds.

Explaining as he goes, he sometimes deliberately makes mistakes to help show common errors to avoid.