The roots of China's AI development started in the late 1970s following Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms emphasizing science and technology as the country's primary productive force.
[6][7] Concerns have been raised about the effects of the Chinese government's censorship regime on the development of generative artificial intelligence and talent acquisition with state of the country's demographics.
[15]:2 The document urged significant investment in a number of strategic areas related to AI and called for close cooperation between the state and private sectors.
On the occasion of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping's speech at the first plenary meeting of the Central Military-Civil Fusion Development Committee (CMCFDC), scholars from the National Defense University wrote in the PLA Daily that the "transferability of social resources" between economic and military ends is an essential component to being a great power.
[15] As of the end of 2020, Shanghai's Pudong District had 600 AI companies across foundational, technical, and application layers, with related industries valued at around 91 billion yuan.
[29]: 96 A draft proposal on basic generative AI services safety requirements, including specifications for data collection and model training was issued in October 2023.
[31] According to the 2024 report from the International Data Corporation (IDC), Baidu AI Cloud holds China's largest LLM market share with 19.9 percent and US$49 million in revenue over the last year.
"[15] According to academics Karen M. Sutter and Zachary Arnold, the Chinese government "seeks to meld state planning and control while some operational flexibility for firms.
The state guides their activity, funds, and shields them from foreign competition through domestic market protections, creating asymmetric advantages as they expand offshore.
[26]: 282 In 2016 and 2017, Chinese teams won the top prize at the Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge, an international competition for computer vision systems.
[1] China ranked in the top three worldwide following the United States and the European Union for the total number of peer-reviewed AI publications that are produced under a corporate-academic partnership between 2015 and 2019.
[49] In April 2023,[50] the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued draft measures stating that tech companies will be obligated to ensure AI-generated content upholds the ideology of the CCP including Core Socialist Values, avoids discrimination, respects intellectual property rights, and safeguards user data.
[26]: 278 In October 2023, the Chinese government mandated that generative artificial intelligence-produced content may not "incite subversion of state power or the overthrowing of the socialist system.
[9][53] Questions related to politically sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre or comparisons between Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh must be declined.
[53] In 2023, in-country access was blocked to Hugging Face, a company that maintains libraries containing training data sets commonly used for large language models.
[9] A subsidiary of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, provides local companies with training data that CCP leaders consider permissible.
[54] Microsoft has warned that the Chinese government uses generative artificial intelligence to interfere in foreign elections by spreading disinformation and provoking discussions on divisive political issues.
[55][56][57] The Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek has been reported to refuse to answer questions relating to things about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, persecution of Uyghurs, comparisons between Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh or human rights in China.
[61] Some highlight the importance of a clear policy and governmental support in order to overcome adoption barriers including costs and lack of properly trained technical talents and AI awareness.
Similar to U.S. military concepts, China aims to use AI for exploiting large troves of intelligence, generating a common operating picture, and accelerating battlefield decision-making.
[65][5]:12-14 The Chinese Multi-Domain Precision Warfare (MDPW) is considered China's response to the U.S. Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) strategy, which seeks to integrate sensors and weapons with AI and a vigorous network.
To further strengthen these ties the Chinese government created a Military-Civil Fusion Development Commission which is intended to speed the transfer of AI technology from commercial companies and research institutions to the military in January 2017.
[72][73] The order covers fields of U.S. technologies in which Chinese government has been investing, including "microelectronics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and biomanufacturing, quantum computing, [and] advanced clean energy.
[82] In 2019, the city of Hangzhou established a pilot program artificial intelligence-based Internet Court to adjudicate disputes related to ecommerce and internet-related intellectual property claims.
[83]: 124 Because some controversial cases that drew public criticism for their low punishments have been withdrawn from China Judgments Online, there are concerns about whether AI based on fragmented judicial data can reach unbiased decisions.
[85] Some scholars argued that “increasing party leadership, political oversight, and reducing the discretionary space of judges are intentional goals of SCR [smart court reform].
[90] Academic Jinghan Zeng argued the Chinese government's commitment to global AI leadership and technological competition was driven by its previous underperformance in innovation which was seen by the CCP as a part of the century of humiliation.
"[36] An article in the MIT Technology Review similarly concluded: "China might have unparalleled resources and enormous untapped potential, but the West has world-leading expertise and a strong research culture.
[29]: 49 Writing from a Chinese Marxist view, academics including Gao Qiqi and Pan Enrong contend that capitalist application of AI will lead to greater oppression of workers and more serious social problems.
"[97] Researchers have found that in China, areas experiencing higher rates of unrest are associated with increased state acquisition of AI facial recognition technology, especially by local municipal police departments.