AI Governance Is not Just Top-Down in China, Research Finds
AI governance is led by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator.
China hawks state that it is part of the state’s censorship of the internet. In September, the Cyberspace Administration carried out a two-month campaign in which it threatened to dish out “strict punishments” against social media apps such as Weibo — a popular micro-blogging site — that failed to rein in “negative” content about life in China.
Tech news outlet Wired reported that every AI company in China has to register with the regulator and show that their products avoid risks, ranging from psychological harm to “violating core socialist values.”
Chen’s paper, co-authored with Lu Xu from Lancaster University, points out how China became the first country to have formal regulations in place that specifically relate to generative AI. The topic has been a source of debate in the West in recent weeks after the furor over Grok, Elon Musk’s AI on the social media platform X, creating sexualized deepfake images of women and children.
Chinese generative AI is legally restricted from making content that is unlawful or considered vulgar to “reflect the taste and wider concerns of contemporary Chinese society,” the paper states. “China has also developed arguably one of the most effective and rigorous systems for minor protection in cyberspace, encapsulating gaming, short-video and GAI services,” it adds.
Last year, the communist government updated its wide-ranging Minors Protection Law to include online restrictions. It limited the time minors spend online, while smartphone producers were forced to install child-friendly modes.
Even before that legislative update, Chen said that AI developers had looked to self-regulate and “proactively impose rules” on their platforms to avoid clashing with regulators.
The reason is twofold, she explained. The first is not wanting to fall foul of the government’s strict censorship laws. For example, DeepSeek — China’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot — will not respond to prompts that are critical of Xi’s administration.
The second reason AI-utilizing firms have decided to self-regulate is market-driven, Chen continued. Chinese culture retains Confucian values, where the hierarchical nature of the family remains strong. It means that, if parents spot their children consuming harmful or undesirable content on AI and other online platforms, they are likely to intervene.
“If ByteDance does not control the content for kids, then the parents would be furious, and then they would simply just say, ‘No, I’m not going to use your TikTok, and I’m done,’” said Chen. “Tech companies don’t want to face this kind of scenario where the consumers are not happy.”
There is a wider question, Chen accepted, of how powerful the other non-state actors are in an authoritarian society like China’s. But she said weighing that up is a question for further research.
“In this paper, what we wanted to demonstrate is that these different actors, they indeed have been actively participating in shaping the regulations and policies and guidelines and standards in the field,” she added.
Patrick Daly is a Northeastern Global News reporter in London. The article is published courtesy of Northeastern Global News.
