As China competes with the United States for dominance in artificial intelligence, a crucial strategic sector, President Xi Jinping of China promised “self-reliance and self-strengthening” to develop AI in China, according to official media on Saturday.
Xi stated that China should use its “new whole national system” to advance AI development during a study session held by the Politburo on Friday.
According to the official Xinhua news agency, Xi stated, “We must recognize the gaps and redouble our efforts to comprehensively advance technological innovation, industrial development, and AI-empowered applications.” Xi mentioned that policy support would be given in areas like talent development, research, intellectual property rights, and government procurement.
According to some analysts, China has closed the gap between the US and China in AI development in the last 12 months. The Chinese AI startup DeepSeek gained international recognition in January when it unveiled an AI reasoning model that it said was less expensive to construct than its Western competitors and was trained using less sophisticated chips. In the field of infrastructure software engineering, China has also gained ground.
The revelation from DeepSeek cast doubt on the notion that China was lagging behind the United States following the groundbreaking launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 and that U.S. sanctions were impeding China’s AI industry in the midst of a dynamic geopolitical tech competition.
We need to keep stepping up basic research, focus on mastering key technologies like high-end processors and basic software, and create an autonomous, controlled, and cooperative system of basic hardware and software for artificial intelligence,” Xi stated.
Further, he stated that rules and regulations pertaining to AI should be expedited in order to establish a “risk warning and emergency response system, to ensure that artificial intelligence is safe, reliable, and controllable.”
Saying last year that AI shouldn’t be a “game of rich countries and the wealthy,” Xi called for greater international collaboration and oversight in the field.
