Back in 2017, when AI was only really known for its super-power abilities in the realm of chess and similar games, Xi Jinping announced plans to make China an innovation hub for AI by 2030, and since then China has invested tens of billions of dollars a year in AI tech.
It current trains far more top level AI engineers than any other nation and 30% of high quality research papers on AI are now published in China, possibly having benefitted from cyber-espionage over the years.
AI is the basis of China's state surveillance system and it is working on applying it to global cognitive warfare, working on ways to use it to manipulate public opinion in other countries in China's favour. For example in Taiwan China is apparently using personal information and deep-fakes to misinform the public about its intentions towards the country.
However China's successes may be limited to its own country, as Baidu's Earnie, China's version of ChatGTP is widely regarded as less intelligent as the latter, probably because most content on the internet is written in English and so such generative AIs have more content to learn from if their principle focus is English.
A bigger problem for China may be its experts migrating from the country - only 1/10 AI developers remain in China, most have left for America.
They may have had the right idea - in April China produced a draft law stating that AI generated content in China must reflect 'core socialist values' with anything else being regarded as a subversion of state power.
I have to wonder how successful this censorship will be, but to date China seems to have been pretty successful with oppressing its population and keeping its Fire Wall intact, but then again with a population of over one billion, there have to be some cracks in there somewhere?!?
Source: stats from an article in The Week, 10 June 2011.