Artificial intelligence industry in China - Wikipedia

The development of artificial intelligence in China began in the late 1970s after Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up, which prioritized science and technology as primary productive forces. Initially, progress was slow due to limited resources and talent, with most research led by scientists educated abroad, leaving China behind most Western countries. However, since 2006, the Chinese government has steadily advanced a national AI agenda, culminating in the 2016 13th Five-Year Plan that aimed for global AI leadership by 2030. By 2025, China is recognized as a world leader in AI, alongside the United States. The State Council established fifteen 'national AI teams' from companies like Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, SenseTime, and iFlytek, each tasked with leading development in sectors such as facial recognition, software/hardware, and speech recognition. AI's rapid deployment has profoundly impacted Chinese society across socio-economic, military, intelligence, and political domains, with agriculture, transportation, accommodation, and manufacturing most affected. The private sector, universities, and the military collaborate closely due to few boundaries. In 2021, China enacted its first national law addressing AI ethics, the Data Security Law. In October 2022, the US announced export controls to restrict China's access to advanced AI chips. In 2023, China's Cyberspace Administration mandated that AI content uphold CCP ideology, core socialist values, avoid discrimination, respect intellectual property, and safeguard user data. In 2025, new guidelines emphasized minimizing unsafe training data and regular model testing. Concerns have been raised about the impact of China's censorship on generative AI development and long-term talent acquisition amid demographic challenges. Additionally, critics note that official AI safety standards prioritize CCP priorities, diverging from democratic norms, and raise alarms about the extension of China's mass surveillance and censorship systems abroad.