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.
Graphics dashboard
Chinese LLM developers are eligible for compute subsidies
Although most primarily rely on private funding, LLM developers in China benefit from a supportive ecosystem which incentivizes model training and adoption. For example, several local governments have been issuing “compute vouchers” (算力券). A single organization can receive compute subsidies ranging from CNY 1 to 10 million per year, depending on the location, covering an average of 10-30 percent of expenses on a single purchase. Some subsidies are not available exclusively to LLM or AI developers.
DeepSeek marks arrival of Chinese LLMs
The Chinese LLM DeepSeek released its V3 and R1 models in January 2025, where their performance and low costs caught the world’s attention. Between June 2024 and January 2025, the presence of Chinese models in the leaderboard of popular forum Chatbot Arena has significantly increased.
AI is a trending topic in Chinese party and state documents
The share of Chinese party and state documents mentioning AI has risen consistently since 2015, illustrating Beijing’s focus on this technology. In 2024, a whopping 9 percent of all party and state documents mentioned the term “artificial intelligence” (人工智能). China’s leadership regards AI as a strategic field for boosting the country’s economic competitiveness, modernize its military and redefining the global balance of power.
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
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
Recent developments
Tech progress
- Alibaba’s new Qwen3 large language model (LLM) family intensifies competition in China’s LLM landscape. While its flagship 235B model is competitive, the key impact stems from its smaller, open-weight models (under 30B parameters). These models demonstrate a capability leap for their size, facilitating wider deployment on devices like phones and cars in resource-constrained environments. (Source (EN): Sina April 30, 2025)
Domestic dynamics
- China’s new national security white paper labels emerging technologies “double-edged swords,” acknowledging risks. It calls for “AI safety oversight and evaluation systems” and related legislation, embedding AI safety within the “Comprehensive National Security” concept. (Source (CN): State Council, May 12, 2025)
- Beijing is prioritizing the creation of large Chinese-language collections of data (corpora) for AI training. The Digital China 2025 Action Plan calls for building and labelling high-quality AI datasets, particularly in sectors like transport, finance and health. This aligns with other policies, underscoring an increased focus on foundational data infrastructure. (Source (CN): National Data Administration, May 16, 2025)
- China’s cyberspace regulator, through its “Qinglang” (清朗) campaign against AI misuse, is tightening control over AI training data. The initiative mandates stricter management, explicitly prohibiting illegally sourced, infringing, or false data. This signals Beijing's heightened focus on data integrity and controlling foundational AI inputs for domestic development and risk mitigation. (Source (CN): Cyberspace Administration of China, April 30, 2025)
- Beijing is putting regulatory pressure on autonomous driving technology. More rigorous testing and reporting are required for autonomous driving features and over-the-air (OTA) software updates. Beijing is also discouraging the use of marketing language for self-driving features. (Source (CN): EE focus, April 19, 2025)
Artificial Intelligence in China: Profiling the actors
Publications
Topics
