By Giulia Saccone - AI, Cyberspace and Space Team
What’s China’s AI policy? Rejuvenation of the nation through security and development
Generally, China is regarded as an innovative player in the AI race but an unlikely protagonist in the global governance dimension: this is given by its state-driven government, and AI national governance based on sovereignty‑first, security‑heavy, surveillance‑enabled principles. [1] However, the reconfiguration of the international order, and the US withdrawal from UN-based institutions provide China the occasion to promote an image of a responsible leader in the field of AI governance, pursuing a strategy grounded on the values of inclusion and fairness, with Chinese characteristics.
This input is based on its foundational goals: economic growth and security, as stated in the 2017 Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan. For the former, AI can be used as a propeller for the rejuvenation of the nation: the aim of restoring national wealth and power under the guidance of the CCP. Regarding the latter, AI-generated content presents a risk of jeopardizing social stability, hence political and national security. [2] Therefore, China has to leverage the international stage: it has to ensure that the current institutions that foster growth and security are upheld and promote policies that enable innovation and the activity of Chinese stakeholders, amid the US containment or the EU decoupling strategy and the criticism on its human rights policy. This reflects China's attempt to position itself as an alternative to US and European approaches to AI governance.
The impact of Chinese AI policy on the international stage: international competition trough norm setting and equipment export
In order to achieve development and ensure security, while hedging criticism and achieving strategic parity with the US, China has pursued a strategy aimed at projecting the image of a committed major player, capable of ensuring an equitable AI development for the Global South. This is enacted by the 2025 Global AI Governance Action Plan (GAIGI), which creates a strategy focused on UN-based multilateralism, human-centered AI, laws and consensus-based development of AI governance and respect for countries’ sovereignty.
This latter value in particular is a concept developed based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, [3]used by China as a counterargument towards international criticism over its human rights policies. The other element that we should specify is the commitment under the UN-based multilateralism: in the GAIGI institutions like the UN should be a starting point for consultations on soft laws that countries can then adopt and adapt into their national law, as corroborated by Beijing’s endorsement of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s proposal to create a new international body to govern AI under the UN framework. [4]
The commitment towards human-centered AI has to be understood as the objective of creating an AI development that involves all layers of the population, as corroborated by its statement in the UN Human Rights Council regarding the protection of the rights of specific vulnerable groups from AI-related harms. Moreover, UNESCO has been the most fertile ground for Beijing’s AI diplomatic activities, also due to the US withdrawal from 2017 to 2022 and its forthcoming second exit in December 2026. There, China has financed the Beijing Consensus on AI and Education, implemented through the International Forum on AI and the Futures of Education and its contributions to the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. This first global ethical framework to foster the role of AI in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Other fertile grounds are the standard development organizations, like the International Telecommunications Union and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which are leveraged for creating standards favorable to Beijing’s trade stakeholders and investors in their trade portfolios. [5]
The GAIGI is complemented by the AI Safety Governance Framework: a set of guidelines on the classification of AI safety risks and for the development and application for stakeholders. Another supporting policy is the 2023 Global Data Security Initiative, which projects the image of a responsible player, addressing the primary engine of AI, and aims at fostering an environment committed to data security and espionage by other countries, and responsible use for innovation and e-commerce.
The significance of these documents resides in the fact that they are among the few to be available in English, hence targeted for foreign audiences to stimulate the necessary consensus-building in the field and to counter accusations of espionage. [6]
Beijing’s objective of achieving a whole-of-society development is enacted by the 2024 AI Capacity-Building Action Plan for Good and for All, along with its flagship programs, the Belt and Road initiatives (BRI) and Digital Silk Road (DSR). These programs aim at creating infrastructure connectivity and personnel training to bridge the “intelligence gap”, while functioning also as vectors for Tencent, Alibaba and other stakeholders' investments, aimed at securing technology lock-ins, promoting the mutual recognition of tech standards, and integrating Chinese technology into foreign markets.[7]
So far, these plans have found fertile ground in the Middle East, Africa and especially among South Asian countries, while encountering skepticism in Latin America. [8] Nonetheless, the Global South functions as the ideal recipient thanks to China’s self-positioning in the middle ground between technological superpower and developing nation, [9] allowing a rhetoric that frames it as an enabler of the Global South development. This allows the region to become the solution for Beijing’s crisis of internal demand due to its large pool of new customers, and as an opportunity to acquire embargoed chips, as happened with Nvidia products. [10]
Hedging the oppositions
Nevertheless, the strategy is not free from criticism due to China’s state-centric approach to AI governance, which leads to breaches in human rights that Western actors like the US and the EU regard as unacceptable and incompatible with their own agendas. On the Sino-American relations, this factor is coupled with a strategic competition in emerging technologies, which has led to interdependencies and mutual strategic vulnerabilities.
China has opposed this situation, challenging its technological hegemony and the American-centric global order with a confrontational rhetoric, especially in the field of semiconductors. [11] At the practical level, this is coupled with activities in the UN fora, the GAIGI and the Capacity Building Action Plan, enabling the creation of alternative pathways of supply chain, economic exports and pools of data from the Global South to equip and create China’s AI models. Therefore, this strategy aims at creating a virtuous cycle, an alternative to the US circuit, involving other international actors. These issues have gained sufficient prominence to feature among the key topics discussed during the Xi-Trump summit of May 2026, which, however, have seen only timid developments.
The criticism of China’s human rights policy (whether in the digital field or not) is especially upheld by the EU and its 27 member states. Furthermore, Brussels has manifested the intention of achieving strategic autonomy through the Chips and AI acts, which have resulted in its recent proposal of curbing the ties with China in the digital technology field due to security concerns.
The EU is an important factor in China’s global AI governance strategy due to its role as a rule-maker: its ability to set trade and technology standards can affect relations with China’s third-largest trade partner. However, in this case, Beijing is pursuing an ambivalent strategy, characterized by an emphasis on shared commitments to human rights and development, [12] while threatening retaliation against measures deemed discriminatory. The strategy targets the EU's core commitment to human rights while leveraging considerable trade relations to retain the EU Member States’ engagement, demonstrating alignment while simultaneously seeking alternative support on the global stage.
What future is China envisaging for AI governance?
China is attempting to extend its role from innovator to driver of the discourse over international AI governance, trying to take the space left by the US in traditional institutions, leveraging its self-positioning as a middle ground between a technological powerhouse and a member of the Global South. China has sought to position itself as a supporter of an inclusive approach grounded in human rights. This strategy is grounded in its need to balance the US in the AI strategic competition and EU strategic autonomy, while not burning the Sino-European relations entirely, and expanding its outreach in the field to third actors.
Therefore, China is trying to transpose its ultimate goals of rejuvenation of the nation through economic development and protection of the state and political security on the international stage with a series of capacity-building initiatives, projecting an image of a committed actor through international institutions. It is in its perception of the former, and in its value of respecting “every country’s national context” that resides its desired capability of achieving the security goal: international fora are seen as a flexible institution for finding common grounds, but refrain from imposing legally binding rules, and Beijing’s commitment to respect all actors’ internal situations attempts to establish a logic for which national policies are free from international scrutiny.
[1] Hung, Ho Ting. “Exploring China’s Cyber Sovereignty Concept and Artificial Intelligence Governance Model: A Machine Learning Approach.” Journal of Computational Social Science 8, no. 1 (2025): 24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-024-00346-8.
Zeng, Jinghan. “Artificial Intelligence and China’s Authoritarian Governance.” International Affairs 96, no. 6 (2020): 1441–59. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaa172.
[2] Guangyu, Qiao-Franco, and Annelotte van Beek. China’s Strategy for Global AI Governance. 2025; Leiden Asia Center, n.d. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://leidenasiacentre.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/25-04-01-Chinas-Strategy-for-Global-AI-Governance.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwii1ZjFh4qVAxXi87sIHezbI64QFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0ZeNimOwwE_GdMh6NEZ5EF.
[3] Dunford, Michael, and Weidong Liu. “China’s Evolving International Economic Engagement: China Threat or a New Pole in an Equitable Multipolar World Order?” Area Development and Policy 9, no. 2 (2024): 131–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/23792949.2023.2225092.
[4] Guangyu and van Beek (2025)
[5] Guangyu and van Beek (2025)
[6] Ibidem
[7] Ibidem
[8] Zhao, Hengfeng. “Navigating China’s Multi-Track Strategy in Global AI Governance.” Geopolitics of AI Governance, 2026. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.sdu.dk/en/forskning/forskningsenheder/samf/cws/cws-activities/2026/geopolitics-of-ai-governance&ved=2ahUKEwiaw_fyjoqVAxXH8bsIHe5lBcQQFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2LBTKzUyEX8JwoNYYNKuoJ.
[9] Dunford, Michael, and Weidong Liu. “China’s Evolving International Economic Engagement: China Threat or a New Pole in an Equitable Multipolar World Order?” Area Development and Policy 9, no. 2 (2024): 131–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/23792949.2023.2225092.
[10] Guangyu and van Beek (2025)
[11] Zhao, 2026
[12] Woon, Chih Yuan. “Narrating Chinese AI Geopolitical Tradition.” Geography Compass 20, no. 1 (2026): e70062. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.70062.
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