中文
By Li Xuan and Li Xing
Lead: As the U.S. pursues closed-source AI dominance, China is promoting inclusive, open-source development. Which of these visions prevails will determine whether AI becomes a driver for shared prosperity or a force that deepens global inequality.
China's newly unveiled recommendations for formulating its 15th Five-Year Plan elevates artificial intelligence to a transformative, economy-wide growth engine, marking a qualitative leap from the 14th Five-Year Plan, which treated it as a supporting element within a broader tech ecosystem alongside quantum computing, semiconductors, and biotech.
The shift represents a milestone advancement from niche applications to pervasive empowerment, reflecting AI's maturation as a core force for innovation and growth. According to the recommendations, the 15th Five-Year Plan will promote an "AI Plus" initiative, akin to the earlier "Internet Plus" strategy, envisioning AI permeating every facet of socioeconomic development like running water and electricity, empowering modern society. This holistic approach positions AI as a universal catalyst, fostering systemic change rather than isolated improvements.
The U.S. and China are shaping distinct pathways for the global development and diffusion of AI. Behind these two approaches lie two contrasting governmental and philosophical stances. The U.S. AI ecosystem is driven by the private sector with minimal regulatory oversight. This model emphasizes leadership by private enterprises, with major AI companies adopting closed-source approaches. For instance, the core technologies and training data of OpenAI's GPT-5 and Anthropic's Claude remain inaccessible to the public, reinforcing barriers that entrench technological monopoly.
This closed-source approach ultimately aims to safeguard U.S. dominance. The U.S. pursues AI development with an almost religious fervor, seeking the "singularity" — the moment when AI achieves general intelligence across all domains, matching or exceeding human capabilities comprehensively. The U.S. fears China might reach this milestone first.
This anxiety of losing technological hegemony is also reflected in its diplomatic posture. The U.S. AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, prioritizes expanding exports of its full-stack AI technology. However, the initiative has an overt strategic intent: to form "technology alliances" with allied nations in order to contain "rival countries." Moreover, far from genuine diplomacy fostering collective AI global governance toward the common good, the plan constitutes coercive alignment, pressuring partner countries to adhere to American semiconductor export controls.
In contrast, China pursues a pragmatic "AI Plus" initiative centered on open-source models. By providing affordable, open-source solutions to developing nations, it seeks to assist the Global South in strengthening its own AI capabilities, promote equal participation in the process of AI development, and bridge the global AI gap.
Just three days after the launch of the U.S. AI Action Plan, Global AI Governance Action Plan was published at the 2025 World AI Conference in Shanghai, explicitly proposing to "support countries, especially the Global South, in developing AI technologies and services in line with their national conditions, assist the Global South in truly accessing and utilizing AI, and promote AI development in an inclusive and universally-beneficial manner." This reflects China's advocacy and commitment to the "right to development."
The Global Governance Initiative is another major proposal put forward by China, following the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative. It is in full alignment with the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter, resonates with the shared aspirations of the vast majority of countries, and upholds the "right to development" for developing countries. Guided by the principle of "leaving no country or individual behind," China seeks to improve the rules and discourse of global governance. Given the lack of adequate governance in new areas such as AI, cyberspace, and outer space, this approach embeds it within broader imperatives of inclusivity and sustainable progress, diverging sharply from the U.S.'s zero-sum framing.
U.S. rhetoric often uses the idea of a clash between "techno-democratic" and "authoritarian" AI systems to rally its allies. Yet, this superficial and reductive labelling conceals the true substantive differences and opportunities for mutual understanding between China and the U.S.
Under the U.S. AI Action Plan, the National Institute of Standards and Technology is mandated to remove references to misinformation, diversity, equity, inclusion and climate change from its AI Risk Management Framework. The rationale is that "the U.S. must ensure that free speech flourishes in the era of AI and that AI procured by the federal government objectively reflects truth rather than social engineering agendas." This approach treats AI as a "neutral" tool to be untouched by societal and governmental influence.
China takes a different path. Since the emergence of generative AI in 2022, the Cyberspace Administration of China has mandated that AI training and data annotation prioritize values such as harmony, solidarity, non-discrimination and non-vulgarity, ensuring that AI inherits Chinese civilizational legacies passed down across generations.
From the perspective of Marxism, AI technology, as a representative of new quality productive forces, is driving a profound transformation in global relations of production and the international order. The U.S. seeks to sustain its dominant position within the existing international division of labor through technological monopoly.
China, in contrast, promotes a more equitable and inclusive global development model via open-source technology. How these new production relations are realigned will determine the direction of humanity's shared future. Hence, the transformative power of AI demands proactive, multilateral governance to prevent technological enclosure from deepening global inequality.
China and the U.S. must transcend zero-sum rivalry and jointly lead a cooperative governance framework across three domains: ensuring AI benefits all humanity, expanding AI knowledge and capacity globally, and establishing robust safety standards against cyberattacks.
Only through such balanced cooperation — where innovation competition coexists with governance collaboration — can the transformative potential of AI be harnessed for human advancement rather than domination. The future of AI is not predetermined by international rivalry but by our collective capacity to align technological progress with the interests of people across the globe.
Li Xuan is an assistant professor at the Institute of International and Regional Studies, Zhejiang University of Technology, and a member of the Zhejiang Development and Security Research Think Tank Alliance. She has served as a policy consultant for the OECD.
Li Xing is a Yunshan leading scholar and director of the European Research Center at the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at Aalborg University in Denmark.
