Turning technological strength into governance credibility and cross-border cooperation

Artificial intelligence is often framed as a race for models, chips and market share. However, discussions at the Forum on the Development of International Science and Technology Organizations and Global Science and Technology Governance, held on March 28 during the Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing, emphasized that the more important question goes beyond technological competition. For China, the central challenge is not simply whether the country is visible in AI, but whether that visibility can be converted into stronger governance, more credible international leadership and deeper cross-border cooperation. That is where the next phase of China’s AI story will be decided.

China’s strength in AI should be understood through its broader development path. Its developmental narrative could be described through four qualities: an equalizer, a bricoleur, a systemizer and a socioeconomic weaver. These are more than rhetorical labels. Together, they capture a development logic that widens access, combines tools pragmatically, organizes complexity at scale and links technology to broader social and economic transformation. This helps explain how a technological field becomes embedded in the wider fabric of production, administration and modernization.

This also helps clarify what is distinctive about China’s position today. Many countries can develop advanced technologies, but few can connect them to long-term developmental coordination. China’s historical policy trajectory, including the cumulative discipline of the five-year plans, has given it an unusual capacity to link technological ambition with industrial scaling and organizational follow-through. Over successive five-year plans, priorities have evolved in a structured manner — from early emphasis on informatization and industrial digitization, to the integration of digital technologies with the real economy, and more recently to the elevation of AI as a strategic driver of modernization.

In that sense, China’s rise in AI reflects a deeper developmental logic: the ability to move from experimentation to infrastructure, from innovation to production and from technical potential to system-wide application. The more pressing question now is what comes next. If earlier stages of development focused on catching up, scaling up and building industrial capacity, the next stage requires China to play a stronger role in shaping the governance language around AI itself.

Governance should therefore move to the center of the discussion. AI is a matter of legitimacy, rules, institutions and cooperation. The narrative alignment theory helps explain this shift. Narratives are not decorative additions to technology; they shape the categories through which technology is understood, justified and accepted. They influence whether AI is seen as a source of fear or trust, fragmentation or cooperation, exclusion or development. They also affect whose rules, organizations and standards gain authority internationally. At this stage, leadership can no longer be measured only by who builds the most advanced technology. It should also be measured by who can connect technology to legitimate and credible governance frameworks.

This has direct implications for China. The country already has substantial material strengths: scale, industrial capacity, digital ecosystems and a strong policy commitment to scientific and technological advancement. But technological strength alone does not automatically generate narrative authority. A country may be highly capable in production and application, yet still remain less influential in defining the interpretive framework through which that capability is understood globally. China now faces a strategic transition. To move from AI visibility to developmental leadership, it should present AI not only as a field of innovation, but as part of a broader story of public value.

China’s next task is to institutionalize AI through clearer governance pathways. One is rule-making: contributing more actively to technical standards, ethical protocols, data governance principles and cross-border interoperability. Another is organizational leadership: embedding AI in durable, credible and cooperative institutions, including international science and technology organizations, university networks, professional associations and public-private platforms linking research, industry and policy. A third is narrative clarity: communicating AI not only as a driver of growth, but also as a contributor to order, inclusion and long-term development. This requires a language that is internationally intelligible as well as institutionally persuasive.

Global science and technology governance is increasingly shaped by legitimacy and coordination, not by technology alone. If China wants to play a more prominent role in this environment, it should build frameworks in which innovation and governance develop together. That means showing how AI can support public administration, industrial resilience, the green transition, healthcare, education and cross-regional learning. It also means engaging more deeply in international cooperation, so that China is seen not merely as a powerful producer of technology, but as a constructive participant in shaping the rules and organizational architectures through which technology serves development. The future of leadership in AI will depend not only on invention but on the ability to align innovation with legitimate governance.

There is also a deeper historical lesson here. Successful economies often decline when they become imbalanced. Why did technological spirit and innovative capacity shift from one country to another, leaving once-successful economies behind? The answer points to an imbalance. Development weakens when institutions and structures no longer align with new realities. This lesson matters for AI as well. The danger is not only technological lag; it is also the failure to balance invention with meaning, production with legitimacy and capability with trust. China’s opportunity is that it can still build this balance. It can connect technological advances with governance design before deeper misalignment takes hold.

China’s position between the Global North and the Global South further strengthens this possibility. It is unusually placed to act as a bridge: learning from industrialized economies while also speaking to the developmental aspirations of emerging ones. This gives China a distinctive opportunity in AI governance. It can help formulate AI not simply as a luxury of the richest economies, but as a developmental instrument that can be adapted across different institutional contexts. In that sense, China’s contribution could be larger than national advancement alone. It could help widen the global conversation from technological competition to developmental inclusion.

For this reason, the most important transition is conceptual as much as technical. China does not need only more AI. It needs stronger alignment between AI, governance and development, building on the basis of Beijing’s series of provisional regulations over the past years and its five-year industrial projections. It must translate technological capability into governance credibility, industrial strength into institutional trust and national achievement into cross-border collaborative leadership. This is not a soft addition to hard technology. It is the condition under which technological strength gains lasting authority.

In the end, the countries that matter most in AI will not be those that simply build powerful systems. They will be the ones that embed those systems in legitimate institutions, credible rules and cooperative international relationships. China has already demonstrated considerable capacity in development and innovation of smart technologies. Its next challenge is to show that this capacity can also help shape a stable, trusted and development-oriented governance future for AI.

The author is a professor of innovation studies at Liaoning University.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.