Artificial Intelligence
The Chinese government has long elevated artificial intelligence (AI) development to a strategic national priority with policies like the New-Generation AI Development Plan in 2017. It sees the potential of AI to radically transform social and productive structures due to its ability to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence.
US-China competition for dominance over AI technologies shapes today’s geopolitics. Wary of China’s potential, especially Beijing’s ambition to leverage AI for modernizing its military, the US has imposed sweeping export controls aimed at hobbling its progress.
Thanks to government support and global links, Chinese applied AI companies like computer vision firms SenseTime and Megvii are now household names. China’s fast-growing talent base and vibrant ecosystem of companies and public research labs are leading AI application development and producing high-impact AI research.
But China’s main weakness lies in its historical links with US industry: it trails in the fundamentals. China still cannot match the quality of US-designed AI chips and relies on machine learning frameworks developed by US firms. While China’s AI future is for now tied to choices made in Washington, in the long run, Chinese large language models and other types of AI systems may well prove good enough for the tasks they need to fulfill: enabling industrial applications and boosting military and security capabilities.
Artificial Intelligence in China: Timeline of crucial events
Development
Policy/regulation
Huawei releases deep learning software framework Mindspore to the open-source community, as China attempts to reduce reliance on Google and Meta frameworks.
Mar 2020
China's algorithm filing portal goes online for recommender engines, the genesis of a licensing system later used for generative AI and large language models (LLMs).
Aug 2022
China releases rules on synthetic (AI-generated) content, motivated by concerns around deepfakes.
Nov 2022
Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Group announces the bilingual pre-trained model ChatGLM-130B and its open-source version, ChatGLM-6B. The team founds Zhipu AI.
Mar 2023
Baichuan-Inc, a startup of the founder of internet search engine Sugou, releases its first open-source LLM. The Baichuan series is among the best performing in China.
Jun 2023
Chinese AI experts led by a team at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) publish recommendations for a comprehensive AI law after legislation is added to the State Council's work plan.
Aug 2023
China restricts access to Hugging Face, the top international platform for open-source AI collaboration. China’s open-source community is displeased but seeks alternatives to work on leading models.
Oct 2023
Yi-34B, a model from leading startup 01.AI, tops the international leaderboard for open-source LLMs. But it becomes mired in controversy over the way it referenced Meta's Llama2 architecture.
Nov 2023
Chinese online retailer Alibaba announces investment in LLM startup MiniMax, following similar investments in Zhipu AI, Baichuan AI, 01.AI, and Moonshot AI.
Mar 2024
Tsinghua and ShengShu Technology unveil Vidu, a text-to-video generator and China's answer to OpenAI's Sora announced in February 2024.
Apr 2024
US and Chinese officials hold first bilateral talks on AI safety and risks in Geneva.
May 2024
Alibaba Cloud releases its Qwen2 chatbot, which eventually rises to top LLM leaderboards as the best-performing open-source model, but stays behind the leading proprietary models.
Jun 2024
Washington adds a new round of export controls on AI and semiconductors that target China, tightening the screws on chipmaking equipment and added restrictions on memory chips.
Dec 2024
NVIDIA’s stock drops nearly 17% in one day as DeepSeek releases its R1 model, an open-weight model that rivals OpenAI’s o1 model in performance, particularly at reasoning tasks.
Jan 2025
China joins in the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, positioning itself as a key player in global AI governance and open-source development, emphasizing the need to balance AI development with security.
Feb 2025
In a Politburo study session on AI, Xi Jinping calls on China to develop an entirely “independent and controllable” ecosystem of AI hard- and software in the face of US and allies’ export controls.
Apr 2025
China’s first World Humanoid Robot Games are held in Beijing alongside its 10th World Robot Conference, reflecting China’s efforts in developing humanoid robot technologies.
Aug 2025
China proposes regulations on AI chatbots to safeguard children from engagement with content that encourages gambling, violence, or any behavior that could harm their physical or mental health.
Dec 2025
DeepSeek’s GitHub repository update reveals a new model architecture labeled “MODEL1.” The architecture likely underpins the company’s next flagship, DeepSeek V4, and is expected to launch this year.
Jan 2026
As part of its New Year marketing, Alibaba offers users to (food-)shop through its app Qwen. This moves China’s AI industry from dialogue-based business models toward real-life service applications.
Jan 2026
Huawei Cloud started cracking down on corruption, standardizing processes and rebuilding partner rules. This entails clearer boundaries and governance mechanisms for AI and cloud services.
Jan 2026
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and three other agencies require companies to file algorithms for review, reflecting concerns over how they spread online content and make decisions.
Dec 2021
The US puts export controls on semiconductors and key hardware that Chinese firms need to train AI, severely limiting their access to leading-edge graphic-processing units (GPUs).
Oct 2022
Baidu announced ERNIE Bot, a conversational AI bot built on the company's LLM ERNIE. It is widely seen as a response to US-based Open AI’s ChatGPT of November 2022.
Mar 2023
The CAC releases draft rules on generative AI, building on existing synthetic content rules and reflecting the CAC’s focus on controlling online content.
Apr 2023
China becomes the first country to regulate generative AI with final rules. Public chatbots and the underlying models must pass a review – a de-facto licensing regime.
Jul 2023
The CAC greenlights ERNIE Bot and 10 other models for release. The approvals signal regulators' balancing act between security and development and shows censorship is not an insurmountable obstacle.
Aug 2023
China signs the Bletchley Declaration, the outcome of a major AI safety summit hosted by the UK. China's involvement with the US and other democratic nations shows shared concern around risks of AI.
Nov 2023
Top Chinese and Western scientists meet in Beijing to discuss safety and existential risks associated with advanced AI systems.
Mar 2024
The Government Work Report to the National People's Congress proposes the "AI+" initiative to deepen integration between AI and the real economy.
Mar 2024
OpenAI blocks API access for China-based developers after shutting down online influence and hacking networks linked to China and others, further decoupling US and Chinese generative AI ecosystems.
May 2024
A team at Tsinghua University's Department of Precision Instruments develops Tianmoc, a brain-inspired chip designed for AI applications.
Jun 2024
The resolution of the CCP Central Committee’s Third Plenum mentions that China will create oversight mechanisms for AI safety, the most official sign to date that the issue is rising in importance.
Jul 2024
DeepSeek releases DeepSeek-V3, with 671 bn parameters and a context length of 128,000 token.
Dec 2024
Competition in China’s LLM industry continues to heat up as Alibaba’s Qwen appears to power the top 10 open-source models on Hugging Face, although its Qwen 2.5-Max model is yet to be open-sourced.
Feb 2025
China prepares to channel a state guidance fund of CNY 1 trn into deep tech firms. This follows an initial state-backed venture capital fund for AI of CNY 60 bn that had been launched in January.
Mar 2025
The State Council introduces the AI Plus strategy, a ten-year plan for AI development and adoption. It shows Beijing’s goal to achieve an “intelligent economy and society” by 2035 through AI diffusion
Aug 2025
A new white paper on arms control by the Ministry of National Defense includes AI safety content, stating that risks from AI military applications are growing.
Nov 2025
Chinese EV maker Xpeng has built its own unified chip‑OS‑model to scale connected car and robot manufacturing. However, this pivot introduces significant financial pressure and execution complexity.
Jan 2026
DeepSeek’s GitHub repository update reveals a new model architecture labeled “MODEL1.” The architecture likely underpins the company’s next flagship, DeepSeek V4, and is expected to launch this year.
Jan 2026
The Cyberspace Administration proposes to include embodied AI and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) into the 15th Five-Year-Plan, making innovation a top priority to secure China’s economic development.
Jan 2026
Mercedes and ByteDance have jointly integrated AI into Mercedes’ electric models. Announced in September 2025, the cockpit of Mercedes’ new CLA model will feature ByteDance’s “Doubao” AI assistant.
Jan 2026
Recent developments
- Recently, as part of its Chinese New Year marketing, Alibaba offered users to shop and order food through its AI assistant Qwen. This moves China’s AI industry from dialogue-based business models to real-life service applications. (Source (CN): Xinhua, January 16, 2026)
- China proposed regulations on AI chatbots to safeguard children, prohibiting AI from generating content that encourages gambling, violence, or any behavior that could harm the physical or mental health of minors. The rules also require AI companies to detect conversations related to self-harm or violence, which triggers immediate intervention by a human operator and notification to the child’s guardian. (Source (CN): Cyberspace Administration, December 27, 2025)
- DeepSeek’s GitHub repository update revealed a new model architecture labeled “MODEL1.” The architecture likely underpins the company’s next flagship DeepSeek V4 and is expected to launch this year. (Source (CN): EET, January 21, 2026)
- Chinese EV maker Xpeng has repositioned itself as an “embodied intelligence” company and built its own unified chipOSmodel, the “Xpeng G7 Ultra”, to scale connected cars and robot manufacturing. However, this pivot introduces significant financial pressure and execution complexity. (Source (CN): EEF, January 19, 2026)
- China’s AI models are facing limited resources as US export controls remain a key constraint. Tech leaders are focusing on areas such as next-generation models, multimodality, and real-world agents, while urging industry peers to work together to push the AI frontier. (Source (CN): 36kr, January 11, 2026)
- Huawei Cloud started cracking down on corruption, standardizing processes and rebuilding partner rules. This entails clearer boundaries and governance mechanisms for AI and cloud services, following price wars that have led business partners to underemphasize technical strength. (Source (CN): AITechReview, January 10, 2026)
- Mercedes and ByteDance have deepened their collaboration by integrating AI into Mercedes’ electric models. Announced in September 2025, the cockpit of Mercedes’ new CLA model will be equipped with ByteDance’s “Doubao” (豆包) AI assistant. (Source (EN): Yicai Global, September 25, 2025)
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