As China’s AI strategy encourages the widespread adoption of open-source AI across sectors, Chinese policymakers and researchers also publicly warn that AI poses a systemic threat to the existing social order.
But while this may seem like an impossible contradiction, China’s AI strategy is actually a unique paradox viewing AI innovation and state security as intrinsically linked. Or to use the PRC’s own formula: “Develop to Advance Security; Secure to Ensure Development.”
How should analysts and policymakers interpret China’s public policies about AI strategy? How is China balancing its ambitions for AI dominance with efforts to mitigate the national security risks of AI systems? What are the strengths of this nuanced AI strategy, and what are its vulnerabilities?
To answer questions like these, this new research from the NSDPI analyzes China’s layered governance architecture for AI development by unpacking its guiding policies, ethical norms, technical standards, and legal regulation.
Key takeaways include:
- China’s rapid advancements in AI viewed alongside its state-led governance strategy suggest that the PRC’s plan to reconcile security and development by directing AI innovation along politically compatible pathways has been effective.
- Despite announcements supporting the public demand for online safety, transparency, and accountability related to AI technology, Beijing’s larger AI governance strategy is fundamentally designed as a state-led project to build sovereign power and security.
- China’s AI governance offers broad principles with limited procedural detail, empirical assessment data, or evaluation metrics. This ambiguity results in uneven enforcement and produces friction between policy design and operational practice.