Beijing Looks to Hard-Wire Party Values into AI Systems

Xi Jinping, the leader of China, has made it clear that artificial intelligence (AI) is not just about industry or innovation, but about strengthening control over Chinese society. 

Xi, who is both president of China and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), warned at a Politburo study session last week that online disorder poses a political to the country. According to Xi, “Internet chaos pollutes social morals and infringes on the interests of the masses; we must dare to show the sword and resolutely strike, cutting off interest chains and industrial chains, and eradicating the soil and conditions for their breeding.” 

The Politburo, a small group of top party officials who effectively run the country under Xi’s leadership, discussed how AI could monitor public opinion, flag undesirable trends, and enable state intervention to prevent dissent from escalating.

AI is now viewed by the CCP as a tool for social control that could vastly expand China's already extensive surveillance network through AI systems designed to reflect and promote CCP values. 

The ideological framework for this was outlined in a Study Times article published shortly after the Politburo meeting. The Study Times is a media platform close to the CCP.

In the article, Zhao Weidong, a deputy head of the Beijing propaganda department, called on authorities to “strengthen value guidance over algorithms, prevent technological applications from deviating from the correct orientation, and ensure that technological applications are conducive to spreading core socialist values, promoting positive energy, and cultivating noble aesthetic tastes among the people.”

For Chinese citizens, daily life will be mediated by systems designed to support the party’s agenda. Credit scores, job searches, education tools, and recommendation feeds will reward ideological conformity and subtly punish dissent. This system offers a model of digital authoritarianism that could be exported to other countries. 

But it is not only in China that AI undermines civil liberties. Experts say that in the West too the intrusive nature of the technology, matched with government and civil society pressures to police speech and beliefs, will come to threaten free expression and freedom of belief and conscience.