Sinicising AI: Zheng Yongnian on Building China’s Own Knowledge Systems

"China’s DeepSeek is a success but how it produces knowledge is no different from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other models." - Zheng Yongnian

Beyond “AI sovereignty”, the question of how to develop a distinctly “Chinese” AI has grown increasingly prominent among Chinese scholars. Zheng Yongnian argues that to do so requires constructing local “knowledge systems” in the social sciences to ground AI in national values; otherwise, China risks sliding into Western value frameworks as the technology advances.

The idea that the social sciences provide a necessary foundation for progress in the natural sciences has a strong pedigree. During Deng Xiaoping’s first, brief return to government in 1975, a priority was rebuilding the scientific community after more than a decade of Maoist anti-intellectual tumult. Yet how was one to address the socio-political conditions that had allowed this? Realising that justifying a revived scientific culture and modernisation required theoretical backing, Deng supported the establishment of the philosophy and social science departments within the Academy of Sciences and plans for them to be separat…