First and foremost, the 2017 AI Development Plan claims that AI is the ‘core driving force for a new round of industrial transformation’, which will trigger ‘significant changes in economic structure, profound changes in human modes of production, lifestyle, and thinking; and a whole leap of achieving social productivity’. As China’s previous growth model of export-led, low-added value manufacturing has run out of steam and its economy is entering a ‘new normal’ of lower annual GDP growth, AI promises new sources of productivity growth, as well as potential new markets for China’s increasingly sophisticated digital goods and services. Second, as a ‘strategic technology’, AI is also important in national security, most significantly competition with the United States. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has identified AI as a revolutionary force in military affairs, and it is a central element of the ‘military-civil fusion’ initiative that aims to leverage the strengths of the public sector for China’s military build-up. More broadly, as tensions with the United States are growing, and observers increasingly see this as a ‘Sino-US technology Cold War’, China strives for self-reliance on core technologies, of which AI is one.

The third component is the use of AI technologies in all areas of social governance. The 2017 Plan calls for the widespread use of AI in ‘education, medical care, pensions, environmental protection, urban operations, [and] judicial services’, in order to enhance citizens’ quality of life. But it also proposes coercive applications: ‘AI technologies can accurately sense, forecast and provide early warning of major situations for infrastructure facilities and social security operations; grasp group cognition and psychological changes in a timely manner; and take the initiative in decision-making and reactions – which will significantly elevate the capability and level of social governance, playing an irreplaceable role in effectively maintaining social stability.’ In other words, China’s leadership – in the same paragraph – identifies AI both as a promising conduit for better provision of public services, and as a channel for more effective prevention and control of social unrest. The tension between these two sides of the coin has been touched on throughout the essays in this collection, through the lens of different areas of social policy, from education and smart cities to social credit systems.

However, what is striking about the 2017 Plan is not merely the scale of the objectives, or the ambition to become an AI world leader by 2030. It is also the level of detail and intricacy in which the path to those objectives is laid out. In terse phrases, it covers interlocking and mutually supportive elements, ranging from supporting scientific research and development, to specific AI development focus projects, to human resources and financial market reform. This whole-of-society, systems-based view of AI development is only one of many salient examples of the extent to which systems engineering theory has come to underpin Party ideology. It not only reflects how society as a whole is seen as a complex system amenable to intervention, or how the structure of policymaking echoes that system, it also clearly indicates the engineering-type solutions that AI technologies are envisaged to generate.