Five Dimensions of China’s AI-Driven Global Political Ecosystem
The technological vision behind China’s AI strategy.
This is Chapter Two of a special report, published in multiple installments. You can read the previous chapter here and Chapter Three here: China’s AI Power Profile: Advantages, Dependencies, and Limits.
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2.1. Surveillance: From Cameras to Predictive Emotion and Thought Detection
China’s traditional surveillance architecture—exemplified by projects like "Skynet" and "Sharp Eyes"—has long relied on a vast network of over 600 million surveillance cameras, grassroots police forces, neighborhood committees, and centralized data platforms for retrospective tracking and control. While these systems offer wide physical coverage and visible deterrence, they suffer from several systemic limitations: (1) heavy reliance on manual intervention and subjective judgment, resulting in delayed responses; (2) lack of a comprehensive risk prediction mechanism, making proactive prevention difficult; (3) fragmented and siloed platforms across regions, inhibiting effective coordination; and (4) high labor and administrative costs, making it hard to cover rural-urban fringes or areas with high population mobility.
With the advancement of AI, this surveillance paradigm is undergoing a transformative shift. The focus has moved from merely observing “what has already happened” to proactively identifying “what has not yet happened but could.” Control mechanisms have evolved from human-led decision-making to algorithm-driven systemic governance—encompassing perception, interpretation, prediction, behavioral guidance, and real-time intervention—forming a closed loop of algorithmic governance unprecedented in scale.
Reports indicate that cities such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou have deployed AI-empowered “embodied robots” in public spaces. Resembling electric patrol vehicles, these robots are equipped with thermal imaging sensors, high-definition cameras, facial recognition modules, gait analysis systems, and crowd behavior analytics powered by deep learning. They can autonomously detect “suspicious behavior” such as unusual gatherings, evasion of monitoring, disputes, or even facial expressions of fear, transmitting data in real time via 5G and edge computing to the City Brain platform, enabling holistic situational awareness and automated police dispatch.
China’s AI surveillance now aims not only to “see faces” but also to “understand bodies.” According to Biometric Update (Jan. 2025), citing a U.S. Department of Defense report, China is aggressively integrating AI with biometric technologies to establish a near-ubiquitous, contactless identification loop:
Gait recognition, developed by Beijing-based Watrix, can capture individual walking patterns from distances up to 50 meters. Using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks for identity modeling, it maintains over 95 percent accuracy even at night or when subjects are partially obscured. This technology is deployed in dense urban areas like Beijing and Chengdu and works even when individuals wear masks or hats.
Voiceprint recognition systems, co-developed by Alibaba Cloud and law enforcement, collect data from phone calls, surveillance audio, and ambient sound in public spaces to build a large-scale “voice identity graph.” Integrated with video surveillance, these systems enable cross-media identity verification.
Emotion monitoring devices, piloted in coastal factories, universities, and border checkpoints, use EEG headsets to monitor attention, stress responses, and “loyalty metrics” in real time. Data is used for employee performance reviews, student evaluations, and even social credit assessments for individuals displaying emotional anomalies.
Although marketed as tools to improve corporate efficiency or workplace safety, data from such devices is typically aggregated into state-managed “smart city” platforms and integrated into police-operated risk assessment models. This forms a closed-loop system of multi-modal AI → behavior scoring → intervention.
The U.S. Department of Defense's 2025 strategic assessment further highlights that these AI surveillance technologies are not solely for domestic control—they are also the backbone of China's global authoritarian outreach. Through the “Digital Silk Road” under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China exports complete AI surveillance packages—including cameras, data platforms, and recognition algorithms—to countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia, accompanied by police training and data operations services.
2.2. Information Censorship: From Content Deletion to Narrative Engineering
China’s AI systems are reportedly deployed on global social media platforms to flag politically sensitive keywords, translate dissenting posts, and track IP-level activity associated with diaspora communities. These AI tools feed data into centralized platforms accessible to Chinese embassies and consulates, creating a global dashboard for real-time dissent monitoring.
This approach complements a broader data extraction strategy. Through Chinese-owned or co-developed apps, platforms, and cloud infrastructure, vast amounts of behavioral, biometric, and linguistic data are harvested—often without user knowledge or consent. These datasets are used to train AI systems aligned with state narratives and to fuel predictive behavioral tools for tracking diaspora influence and activities.
Examples of China-led, AI-enabled global information interference include:
Automated tracking systems for monitoring activism, Taiwan independence discourse, anti-censorship narratives, and other topics deemed contrary to China's interests.
Fake communities and discourse manipulation, with AI-generated troll comments simulating user ridicule or “reporting” of hostile content, triggering algorithmic downranking or removal.
AI-generated fake evidence —including deepfake pornography—to discredit activists, as in the case targeting Pakistani human rights advocate Mehrang Baloch.
Disguised think tanks and media outlets posing as overseas scholars but promoting pro-China narratives.
Soft propaganda through thematic camouflage, shifting from overt nationalism to themes like environmental protection or global governance, embedding state positions subtly.
Algorithmically-engineered content delivery, with models tailoring posts by timing, trending keywords, and linguistic style to maximize narrative penetration.
This strategy transforms AI into a content production system that bypasses the traditional "state media → distribution → public opinion" pipeline, constructing a new form of digital mainstream directly aimed directly at public cognition—far more effective than conventional propaganda.
China’s newly developed large language models (LLMs), such as DeepSeek-V2 and Ernie Bot (Wenxin Yiyan), are designed not just for technological performance but as cognitive tools reinforcing state ideology. Censorship is embedded between the model’s internal reasoning and its final output. When prompted with sensitive topics—criticism of the CCP, civic mobilization, or protest language—models may not refuse outright but instead apply subtler controls:
Topic redirection to unrelated subjects, omitting critical issues.
Information dilution to weaken factual clarity.
Erasure of critical language such as “transparency”, “accountability,” and “governance”—vocabulary crucial for civic discourse.
Amplification of official lexicon from state media in discussions of governance, order, and development.
Semantic distortion to obscure or modify politically sensitive points.
This “semantic reconstruction censorship” alters what can be said, how it is framed, and how users interpret it—creating an illusion of normal discourse while systematically excluding dissenting concepts. Compared with content deletion, this form of subtle influence is harder to detect and more effective in shaping cognitive frames.
2.3. AI-Powered Large-Scale Social Simulators: The Integration of Surveillance, Suppression, and Control
A 2024 arXiv preprint (Zhao et al., 2024) introduced the AgentSociety Project—China’s first publicly documented initiative to train generative agents, powered by LLMs, to simulate human societies for governance and political control. The system builds an artificial society populated by tens of thousands of “virtual humans”, each with human-like cognition and complex behavior, embedded in realistic social environments to model real-world societal dynamics and institutional transformation.
Core components include:
LLM-Driven generative agents with emotions, motivations, and needs, able to perform social behaviors such as employment, consumption, migration, and social interaction.
Simulated social environments such as cities, economies, and institutional structures, allowing agents to interact dynamically and trigger rule-based feedback.
A massively distributed simulation engine supporting up to 10,000 agents and facilitates up to 5 million daily interactions to model phenomena like social polarization, misinformation spread, basic income policy impacts, and collective response to disaster scenarios.
This design constructs a controllable, observable, and intervenable artificial society, offering a novel platform for studying group behavior, testing policies, and even conducting social governance experiments.
Powered by LLMs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek, the agents exhibit psychologically and linguistically realistic behaviors. This “simulated human mind” approach allows for rich, lifelike social interactions, emotional expressions, and strategic decision-making—surpassing the capabilities of traditional digital human models. The system also integrates psychological and behavioral economic theories (e.g., Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the Theory of Planned Behavior), enabling mind-behavior coupling, where actions follow motivational logic rather than mechanical rules.
The system’s high fidelity and intervention capacity make it a potent tool for social control. Given China’s emphasis on “social stability” and early warning systems, AgentSociety is viewed as a critical component of future digital governance platforms.
Potential applications include:
Simulating Political Discontent and Collective Mobilization: By modeling emotional contagion and group polarization in social networks, authorities can identify potential triggers for unrest stemming from policy changes or societal events. For example, AgentSociety has accurately simulated “flashpoint” formation mechanisms in cases of social polarization and hate speech diffusion.
Policy Sandbox and Predictive Testing: Policymakers can test new regulations in simulated environments, assessing agent “acceptance” and behavioral changes to refine messaging and implementation strategies. One simulation of a universal basic income (UBI) policy revealed how impoverished groups might react in terms of employment and consumption, providing insights for targeted poverty alleviation.
Dynamic Population Control and Urban Planning: By tracking agent migration patterns and occupational choices, the government can simulate urban expansion, infrastructure demands, and evacuation logistics, improving resource allocation.
In China’s governance model, the logic of “prediction—intervention—risk neutralization” is central to both stability maintenance and regime control. AgentSociety provides not only technological capability but also institutional rationale: it allows the state to anticipate, virtualize, and control risks before they materialize.
From a governance standpoint, its significance lies in:
Shifting from Reactive to Preemptive Governance: Traditional governance reacts after protests erupt or online sentiment explodes. AgentSociety enables authorities to detect and restrict the emergence of risks before appear in the real world.
Combining Behavioral Modeling with Ideological Guidance: Beyond simulating behavior, the system allows for ideological intervention—agents’ political views can be preset, with interactions monitored against dissenting behaviors. This “value-first” simulation model offers a new testing ground for propaganda and public opinion engineering.
Scientizing Institutional Legitimacy: By citing AgentSociety simulation results, officials can claim policies are “scientifically validated,” enhancing perceived legitimacy and embedding data-driven governance as a substitute for democratic accountability.
Although still in the research phase, AgentSociety represents a new paradigm of AI-based authoritarianism. By constructing “virtual citizens” within artificial societies, regimes may increasingly gain the tools to control real citizens in the physical world.
When combined with other tools—such as facial recognition, behavior monitoring, and content censorship—it forms part of a panoptic governance infrastructure capable of shaping cognition and regulating behavior. This not only challenges conventional social science methodologies but also poses serious threats to transparency, public participation, and freedom in democratic societies.
2.4. Value Alignment: Reinforcing Inequality Through Regime-Prioritized AI Design
From a broader perspective, China’s AI development strategy presents a direct challenge to the foundational problem of value alignment in AI—that is, how to ensure AI systems behave in ways consistent with human values, intentions, and social norms.
The real question is not simply how to align AI with “human values,” but whose values should take precedence. In a world of value pluralism, values vary widely across cultures, social classes, and individuals. This makes the issue inherently political.
In China, the AI value alignment problem has been subsumed into the state’s ideological framework. Both the content and process of alignment are controlled by the government. AI is mandated to “promote core socialist values,” to prohibit content that “endangers national security, incites subversion, or spreads disinformation,” and to cultivate “positive energy” ecosystems. These values are defined by state agencies, with minimal public participation in determining AI priorities.
China’s model of value alignment is not aimed at reconciling diverse human ethics or social tensions—it is designed to institutionalize top-down authoritarian norms such as nationalism, loyalty to the Party, and the moral legitimacy of state repression. The goal is to eliminate ambiguity, pluralism, and dissent from AI outputs.
This begins with data curation. Training datasets are filtered to exclude alternative ideologies, marginalized voices, and controversial histories. During fine-tuning, human feedback—provided by annotators aligned with official ideology—trains the AI to reinforce state-approved viewpoints. These systems not only omit alternative perspectives but actively invalidate them through algorithmic reasoning.
The societal impact is profound. As AI systems are deployed in recruitment, credit scoring, legal counseling, education, and journalism, their embedded value frameworks structure access to opportunities and rights. Individuals whose behaviors align with the Party line are algorithmically rewarded; those expressing dissenting views are flagged, marginalized, or penalized.
This alignment model also amplifies existing structural inequalities. Minority groups, rural populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals are often misrepresented, stereotyped, or erased entirely from model outputs. As AI becomes more prevalent in high-stakes decision-making, such discrimination risks being codified as neutral computation.
Crucially, China’s alignment architecture is exportable. AI models embedded with state-aligned values can be exported to jurisdictions with weak regulations, replicating the same ideological conformity and exclusionary logic abroad.
2.5. Exporting Authoritarian AI: Embedding Ideology into Global Infrastructure
China’s deployment of AI-centered digital governance extends far beyond its borders, making it the world’s leading exporter of digital authoritarian governance models.
This export is not simply a matter of selling high-tech products. It constitutes a comprehensive “digital sovereignty governance toolkit” that includes hardware—such as surveillance cameras and data platforms—alongside “soft governance elements like training, consultancy, and institutional frameworks.
Key exported technology components include:
Facial Recognition and Behavior Analysis Systems: Led by firms such as Hikvision and Dahua, China exports integrated AI-enabled cameras and behavioral analytics platforms to countries including Zimbabwe, Ecuador, and Serbia. These systems enable target tracking, crowd aggregation alerts, and anomaly detection, becoming pivotal instruments of social control.
“Smart City” and “City Brain” Platforms: Platforms like Alibaba Cloud integrate data governance with urban management, placing traffic flows and population movements under real-time surveillance. Pilot deployments in Kuala Lumpur and Lagos showcase the potential of “governance as control.”
Internet Content Censorship and Social Media Regulation Systems: Featuring keyword blocking, sentiment analysis, and disinformation detection, these systems are paired with police and intelligence training modules. Uganda, Cambodia, and Venezuela have adopted them to strengthen “information sovereignty.”
Mobile Data Extraction and Social Media Forensics Technologies: Developed by Meiya Pico and others, these solutions help law enforcement unlock phones and reconstruct user social behavior. They are widely adopted in developing countries to enhance policing capabilities.
National-Level Data Centers and Cloud Platforms: Led by Huawei, ZTE, and others, China assists multiple countries in building centralized data management infrastructures spanning transportation, education, healthcare, and security.
China’s authoritarian AI export is a coordinated state-enterprise effort, characterized by institutionalization, strong policy guidance, and comprehensive execution systems:
“Digital Silk Road” Infrastructure: Delivered under the BRI’s “Digital Silk Road” initiative, China provides broadband and cloud infrastructure is bundled with governance systems.
Low-Interest Loans Tied to Technical Services: Through entities such as the China Development Bank, concessional loans are contingent on adopting Chinese technology, creating inseparable device-institution packages.
Law Enforcement and Governance Training Programs: China regularly hosts “Security Governance Forums” for law enforcement officials from Asia, Africa, and beyond, promoting “Chinese-style social stability maintenance”.
Enterprises Serving National Strategy: Companies such as Huawei, Dahua, and Hikvision expand internationally in close alignment with Chinese foreign policy, functioning as extensions of state influence.
Recipient countries tend to fall into four categories:
Authoritarian or hybrid regimes (e.g., Belarus, Iran, Ethiopia) with centralized control, low transparency, and high demand for social monitoring.
Fragile or transitional states (e.g., Sri Lanka, Bolivia) where political instability makes rapid-deployment governance attractive.
States hostile or suspicious toward the West (e.g., Venezuela, Algeria), seeking non-Western governance models to counter perceived ideological infiltration.
Resource-poor nations (e.g., Angola, Zambia) drawn to China’s low-cost, mature solutions.
Once implemented locally, China’s model has significant impacts on recipient countries’ political and social structures. These include:
Restructuring power dynamics by concentrating authority in the executive.
Shrinking space for dissent by integrating social stability risk assessments into governance.
Eroding data sovereignty through opaque Chinese-controlled infrastructure.
Diluting democratic mechanisms by replacing citizen oversight with “technical legitimacy.”
Creating technical dependency that deepens political alignment with China.
In sum, to guard against “color revolutions,” democratic spillover, and perceived threats to internal stability, China is actively constructing a globally authoritarian-friendly digital ecosystem. This strategy is proactive: by exporting AI-driven surveillance infrastructure, China the social control capacities of partner regimes and creates an international environment favorable to its own institutional security and information dominance.
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