Open societies can't govern AI. China can.Why China Will Rule AI

The West talks endlessly about AI risk but has no institution that can actually enforce anything, while China's party-run machinery can simply decide — and does.

A 2013 book called The End of Power argued that in the twenty-first century power is easier to get, harder to use and easier to lose. The author says that holds in the West but not in China, where power is hard for others to get, easy to use and nearly impossible to lose.

Who is holding the reins

Warnings signed by the most eminent scientists, a papal encyclical, a king's musings — none of it gains traction. The public is confused and feels it cannot change anything. Legislators move as if they just woke up. Big Tech CEOs calling for regulation look more like they want a cartel to keep rivals out.

In China, 'alignment' for AI has a clear definition: alignment with the Party's ideology. The country's minister of state security listed six threats in print, from deepfaked political rumours and AI-versus-AI cyberattacks to espionage, chip monopolies, algorithmic black boxes — and finally war, where AI has moved from supporting role to lead.

No dissident agents need apply

Anthropic's CEO once proposed putting independent evaluators inside AI companies to stop frontier models slipping out of control. The author says China already has that, in a harsher form: any AI company that matters has a Party cell inside, watching and reminding everyone who is boss.

Jack Ma decamped to Tokyo once the Party made clear who was in charge. China also puts more effort into deploying AI than into building the most powerful frontier models — and the models it does chase will not belong to private interests but sit inside the security apparatus.

The author ends by saying history will judge which system suits superintelligence. He has already picked a side: this time, open societies are the ones at a disadvantage.