"AI was a ‘strategic technology leading the future’," said a 2017 Chinese policy planning document, setting out a roadmap that the source describes as having "seismic implications for national security" and for geopolitical and social change.
2017 policy roadmap: state coordination and an open‑source cadence
The 2017 document described by the source advocated state coordination to nurture a market‑driven AI ecosystem focused on strategic tasks while encouraging "an atmosphere of ‘open source and openness’," including "actively participating in global research and development and governance of AI." That formulation frames Beijing’s approach not as a binary of closing or opening, but as a blended model: state direction plus market actors sharing research and tools.
Cyberspace Administration of China: Apple registered as a server provider (15 July)
The source reports that on 15 July the Cyberspace Administration of China announced Apple had successfully registered as a server provider for AI. The registration, the newsletter explains, means Apple is required to ensure its AI products in China "uphold Chinese Communist Party regulations on information control, including those around censorship and propaganda." That registration is a concrete example of how domestic governance choices are being operationalised for foreign vendors offering AI services inside China.
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Get a security leadWorld AI Cooperation Organization: 29 countries signed in Shanghai last month
AI Under Heaven also covered "29 countries’ signing last month to join the World AI Cooperation Organization in Shanghai." The source characterises those signatories as "mainly nations with relatively weak AI capacity and governance," a configuration that gives China "asymmetrical power in this area" and therefore "influence in deciding such issues in its favour." The diplomatic push into multilateral governance, the newsletter argues, is part of Beijing’s broader effort to shape global standards and institutions around AI.
China’s AI ecosystem: labs, open models, and diplomatic reach
According to the source, nine years after the 2017 roadmap China has built "a plethora of AI labs, driven by commercial competition but also supported by state subsidies and encouraged to work on tasks of national importance." These labs have shared research and built AI models that the newsletter says "can compete with US AI products around the world, and can be downloaded and adapted for free." The piece links those technical outputs to a diplomatic effort — Chinese diplomats "are busily putting their mark on AI governance and standards through bodies such as the United Nations" and encouraging other nations to join China‑led initiatives.
What this means for technologists, policymakers, and affected enterprises and countries
- Technologists and security teams: The piece stresses that China’s open sharing of models and state‑backed labs means code, models and tooling originating in China are increasingly foundational worldwide — worth watching for risk, dependency and interoperability questions.
- Policymakers and regulators: The source urges greater scrutiny of China’s AI ecosystem and suggests democracies "set the policies to respond" as Beijing leverages governance, standards and institutional platforms to expand influence.
- Affected enterprises and countries (Apple, Australia and others): Apple’s registration shows foreign firms must conform to Chinese information‑control rules when operating inside China; Australia is singled out as having "natural advantages, such as the geography for data centres," positioning it to be "useful to AI development" in the global competition.
The newsletter’s own name, AI Under Heaven, is intentionally evocative: the source explains that "All Under Heaven" historically fused geography and political mandate and is still used in state media and scholarship to signal a vision for a new international order. The argument laid out in the reporting is straightforward — Beijing sees AI both as a technology to be led domestically and as an instrument for expanding global influence. The record the newsletter assembles — policy documents from 2017, a Politburo study session in 2018 noting a "leading goose effect," regulatory steps such as the 15 July registration, diplomatic institution‑building, and open‑model diffusion — is presented as evidence that much of the original roadmap is now in motion.
If that trajectory holds, the practical questions are concrete: who builds the shared foundations of AI, who writes the rules that govern their use, and which countries and companies will be bound by those rules? The newsletter from ASPI positions itself and its readers as needed watchers — arguing that "there are still few researchers watching Chinese AI" and that greater scrutiny by technologists, policymakers and analysts is required to anticipate how those foundations will shape global outcomes.
