In the past decade, ever since China’s draconian leader Xi Jinping took political control in the country, Beijing has dedicatedly focused on sharpening its technology ascendence in the global market. This ascendence has however, turned more into a quest of seeking hegemony rather than advancing technologically. China has not only emerged as a global powerhouse in technology, making significant advances in sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI), telecommunications, IoT, quantum computing and other fields, but has also rapidly advanced its position as a hegemon in the global tech landscape. This growing technological dominance has also raised concerning questions about Beijing’s ambitions and the implications it holds for other countries.
Within the AI space, Beijing in the past few years has accelerated its ambitions of dominating the next big discovery in the sector. This aspect is not only a priority for multi-billion-dollar Chinese companies but has also gained greater significance within the Chinese government as well. The State Council of China designated AI as a ‘national priority’ in 2017 as part of its New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, to the extent of setting itself the target of becoming the world’s premier AI innovation centre by 2030. China is understood to be investing heavily in AI research and development, utilising large data to train AI algorithms in pursuit of its hegemonic ambitions. Tech companies from China such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, are at the forefront of such practices in AI innovation, developing applications for facial recognition systems, natural language processing, social credit systems and autonomous vehicles.
These Chinese tech giants are also leveraging these innovations to create various generative applications such as Tencent’s Different Dimension Me animated image generator, which was launched globally in late 2022. Baidu too is in the race to upgrade its ten-billion-parameter model (ERNIE-ViLG) which was launched last year. However, apart from the marketable aspect of Chinese investments in AI, China could very well leverage such technologies for various military as well as suppressive purposes. Implemnetaitons of AI led facial recognition systems have already rolled out in schools, offices and factories within major provinces in China. More so, these technologies are being used by security forces to monitor citizen activities as well as evaluate the threat levels of citizens that the state considers to be dangerous.
Challenges facing countries given China’s growing AI dominance
Beijing has also showcased interest in setting global technology standards. By universalising Chinese standards, the CPC is seeking to deploy its tools and methods to global players, especially in the field of military equipment. With AI already a prime focus, it will not be long before China begins to export AI led military equipment to countries around the world. These aspects thus pose significant national security threats to those countries that are large importers of Chinese military equipment. The CPC has already classified this area as a critical direction for development, propelling AI led military innovation as the next big breakthrough the country seeks to achieve in the coming years. This was also observed in the report of the 19th National Congress where President Xi clearly outlined his ambitions to accelerate the development of military intelligence as well as strengthen joint combat capability of the network information system, including the R&D of the innovative weapons and equipment. Keeping these potential threats in mind, the American government had recently labelled 5 Chinese technology companies as a detrimental threat to the country’s national security.
However, Chinese firms have notoriously begun using subverting tactics to enhance their espionage capabilities for the Chinese government. Huawei’s smart and safe city projects, that rely completely on Chinese AI technologies are gaining prominence all of the world due to its promise of enhancing lifestyle as well as ‘safe and secure gateways’. Having said so, this commitment has proven to fall flat given the back-door links Chinese authorities have had to monitor citizen activities. For instance, European cities such as in Serbia were deemed to be victims of such subversive Chinese tactics. Huawei’s AI technology had, by 2017, made significant headways in Belgrade due to receiving contracts by the city’s local government to acquire security cameras equipped with facial recognition technology from the company. Civil Society representatives in Serbia, understanding the potential risks, carried out an extensive mapping survey to locate all the security camera in the city of Belgrade and reported that at least 8000 cameras had been procured through the 2017 Safe City Strategic Cooperation Agreement. This not only posed a serious national security threat to the sovereignty of Serbia but put into question the government’s ignorance in dealing with Chinese espionage activities through its local companies. The Serbian example should serve as a reminder to other countries that seek to promote or elevate their cities based on Chinese technology; for if ignored, Beijing would invariably be granted direct access to monitoring citizen activities which can prove to be detrimental for the country’s national security.
Furthermore, in its quest of security AI supremacy, The CPC has also begun restricting the export of critical metals meant for chipmaking including gallium and germanium. This export restriction also comes in light of reports that Beijing is looking to amass $27 billion worth of chip funds in order to accelerate the development of cutting-edge indigenous technologies. These funds are also reported to be the largest chip funds to ever be injected in a country’s tech sector.
Moreover, the lack of attention on the ethics of practice in the field of technology, goes far in explaining China’s AI progress and its damaging ambitions. This also serves as a reminder of how the CPC functions within the market, obligating Chinese companies to work with the CPC in furthering its political and security agendas. Thus, for countries around the world, especially for those that share an adversarial relationship with Beijing, it is important to prevent the dominance that the CPC seeks to achieve in the critical domain of technology. However, of greater importance is the potential threat China poses in the field of military, where it seeks to integrate technology and hard power for its own global ambitions, that is nonetheless, detrimental for the world at large.
