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Alcott Wei

China will use new technology, especially artificial intelligence, to guard against Western influence and reinforce its own ideology, according to state media.
At a study session of the Politburo, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, on Friday, President Xi Jinping said new technologies such as AI and big data posed challenges to cyberspace governance but they also presented opportunities.
According to state news agency Xinhua, Xi called for efforts to develop new information technologies and apply them to improve oversight of cyberspace and promote socialist values.
“[We must] insist on shaping cyberspace with positive voices and values,” Xi said.
Beijing has for years remained on high alert against the Western culture that could undercut or erode its ideology.
It considers the internet to be a front line in the rivalry between Chinese and Western ideologies and sees a strong link between controlling ideology in cyberspace and the nation’s sovereignty and political stability.


That message was echoed by Zhao Weidong, a senior Beijing municipal government ideology official, who called for urgent action.
On Friday in Study Times, the mouthpiece of the Central Party School, Zhao said Western culture had spread rapidly around the world and gained influence by using its strength in information technology, posing a threat to China’s culture.
“Information dissemination channels are becoming more complex, and the input of Western cultural products and values is becoming more covert and rapid, and young people are easily influenced, blindly pursuing Western culture and disparaging local culture,” he wrote.
“It is necessary to enhance the influence of mainstream Chinese cultural products and effectively set up a ‘firewall’ using advanced information technology to identify and eliminate harmful information, resolutely keeping the harmful content of Western culture out of our country.”
Zhao said China needed to have an “independent and controllable” data foundation to train AI models “to ensure thorough integration of socialist values”.
The technology was developing rapidly and there was a narrow window of opportunity to achieve the goal, he said.
China unveiled regulations for generative artificial intelligence in 2023 and requires AI-generated content to conform to “socialist core values”.
State media has also ramped up these efforts, with reporters told to produce upbeat content, or “mainstream positive energy”, to feed AI models, a source told the South China Morning Post.
“We are assigned to write 100-200 words to explain or elaborate a certain social and political issue or incident, in line with the official rhetoric. Those texts compose a ‘positive’ corpus to train domestically generative AI,” the source said, refusing to be identified due to the sensitivity to discuss the issue publicly.
“Sometimes there are more sensitive issues, such as Xinjiang and Tibet. The review of the answers to these questions is quite strict. But I haven’t seen my answers appear in domestic AI.”
China has tightly censored AI-generated content on sensitive issues.
China’s internet watchdog has also regularly conducted online clean-up campaigns, warning platforms and banning the accounts of some online influencers.
The most recent crackdown was launched in September and targets “negative emotions” on the Chinese internet.


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China looks to AI and big data to guard against Western values

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News

China

Politics

President tells Politburo that new technology should be applied to promote socialist ideology


President tells Politburo that new technology should be applied to promote socialist ideology.


Communist Party politics

Xi Jinping

Politburo

China looks to AI and big data to guard against Western values

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}President tells Politburo that new technology should be applied to promote socialist ideology

President tells Politburo that new technology should be applied to promote socialist ideology