China Puts Power of State Behind AI—and Risks Strangling It

SINGAPORE—As American tech giants pull ahead in the artificial-intelligence race, China is turning to an old playbook to compete: putting the vast resources of the state behind Chinese companies.

But the heavy hand of China’s government is also threatening to hobble its AI ambitions, as Beijing puts its companies through a rigorous regulatory regime to ensure they adhere to the country’s tight restrictions on political speech.

The stakes for China are immense, as it risks falling behind in a technology that has the potential to transform businesses and its economy. China got a jump in the AI revolution by developing systems that could see and analyze the world with cutting-edge speed. The area of AI known as computer vision, which enables tracking and surveillance, aligns with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s emphasis on political control.

Despite that early success, the country was caught flat-footed by the public debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 and the generative AI craze it unleashed. Generative AI’s large language models, which are used to produce content at speed, can be difficult to predict and are much more likely to undermine that control.