  ChatGPT has been demonstrated to possess significant capabilities in
generating intricate, human-like text, and recent studies have established that
its performance in theory of mind tasks is comparable to that of a
nine-year-old child. However, it remains uncertain whether ChatGPT surpasses
nine-year-old children in Chinese writing proficiency. To explore this, our
study juxtaposed the Chinese writing performance of ChatGPT and nine-year-old
children on both narrative and scientific topics, aiming to uncover the
relative strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT in writing.
  The collected data were analyzed across five linguistic dimensions: fluency,
accuracy, complexity, cohesion, and emotion. Each dimension underwent
assessment through precise indices. The findings revealed that nine-year-old
children excelled beyond ChatGPT in terms of fluency and cohesion within their
writing. In contrast, ChatGPT manifested a superior performance in accuracy
compared to the children. Concerning complexity, children exhibited superior
skills in science-themed writing, while ChatGPT prevailed in nature-themed
writing. Significantly, this research is pioneering in revealing that
nine-year-old children convey stronger emotions than ChatGPT in their Chinese
compositions.
