🇺🇸+🇨🇳 AI & tech. Fellow
@CarnegieEndow
. Author "The Transpacific Experiment: How China & California Collaborate & Compete For Our Future" Ex
@huffpost
. Nugs
Very happy to share my new paper:
“Tracing the Roots of China's AI Regulations”
I go deep explaining how the sausage got made: how 🇨🇳 bureaucrats, academics, journalists, tech co's, and 🇺🇸+🌍 debates shaped Chinese AI governance.
🧵 w/ some highlights!
Just got back from 10 days in Beijing. I’m a terrible photographer but in this thread I’ll share a few pictures and videos from the trip.
The video below is of a great evening on the Liangma river. They’ve cleaned it up a bunch and the people are using it for all kinds of fun.
How did China go from a technological backwater to an innovation powerhouse in just 20 years?
It's a big question with big implications for 🇨🇳, 🇺🇸, and 🌍. I take a crack at answering it in my new piece for
@ForeignAffairs
.
🧵 1/x
Very, very big deal.
I looked at the most-downloaded Chinese and US apps in developing countries back in April. India was the only major developing country where Chinese apps overtook US b/w 2015 & 2019:
I’ve spent the 1.5 years trying to answer two questions:
1. What is China doing on AI governance?
2. Who are the key players, and how do 🇨🇳 AI regulations actually get made?
Today we’re publishing a paper trying to answer that. 🧵 w/ key takeaways (1/10)
AI Red Teaming w/ 🇨🇳 Characteristics
A key Chinese standards body released a draft standard on how to comply w/ China's generative AI regulation. It tells companies how to red team their models for illegal or "unhealthy" information.
🧵 on a fascinating document:
📢China just released its much-anticipated regulation on generative AI.
🧵below w/ my initial notes/reactions.
TLDR: the final version is *much* less strict than the April draft version. This reflects a very active policy debate in 🇨🇳 + econ concerns.
A picture of that same water craft scene on the Liangma river. Sitting by the side of the river drinking beers and watching people have fun falling off water crafts was prob my favorite part of the trip.
Quarantine life tip: use this time to *learn new things,* especially things that stretch your mind in a new way.
I've been working through
@AndrewYNg
's Machine Learning class on Coursera. Good hard work, but it's the most calming + fulfilling 2 hours of each day for me.
🧵 China has been rolling out lots of new AI governance measures that will reshape 🇨🇳 AI & make waves around the 🌏.
It’s easy to lose the governance forest for policy trees, so I broke down 3 key initiatives, showing how they'll compete & converge. (1/x)
Free mandarin pronunciation advice for all American politicians:
"Xi" = "she"
(Yes, there are nuances, but I promise you're not getting them right. Stick with "she")
I've spent a lot of time with Chinese journalists for all different kinds of publications: state media, American media, dissident media, cultural and sports media.
I wouldn't use "once worked for state media" as an indicator of anything meaningful about them.
According to their LinkedIn profiles, 300 current employees at TikTok and ByteDance previously worked for Chinese state media. 23 are ByteDance directors, 50 work on TikTok, and 15 say they currently work for *both* ByteDance *and* a state media org.
Very, very excited to be joining Evan and the whole
@CarnegieEndow
team.
I've learned so much from Carnegie folks in DC, Beijing and Delhi, and I can't wait to join their ranks. I'll be starting properly in October, so stay tuned...
1/3: I’m so pleased to welcome
@mattsheehan88
to
@CarnegieEndow
as fellow for China Studies in the
#CarnegieAsia
program. Matt is a prolific writer and trenchant analyst of China’s relationship to technology, from AI to data to talent. He is a terrific new asset for our program.
Tonight I’m gonna live-tweet the
@88rising
show in SF with
@richbrian
@HigherBrothers
and
@sushitrash
. Showed up 30 minutes before doors opened and there’s a line 300m around the block. Haven’t lined up like this in SF since seeing Obama in ‘07
I've been going through some old China photos that make me smile, and wanted to start a thread here to share them with you all. I'll be posting ~1 per day to this thread.
First one: Recycling guy on his bike, Xi'an 友谊路, 2010
10 years ago today (June 18, 2008) was the first time I ever set foot in China. It's been a wild decade following this country, and to celebrate my 10-year
#Chinaversary
I'll be tweeting some "then-now" comparisons. Thread:
If you're into these weird California-🇨🇳 cultural / human / geopolitical mashups, may I humbly recommend a book full of them.
I promise it's not a boring read:
Quick reminder for those tweeting about Wuhan/coronavirus:
This is a really, really scary thing that directly threatens the family and close friends of a lot of people reading your tweets. Just keep that in mind when firing off a hot take.
In
@Lingling_Wei
and
@bobdavis187
's new book they reported that in 2018 the Trump administration had a "Fuck China Week" where they rolled out a series of executive measures...looks like this week is round 2
For ~2 yrs I’ve been researching AI in China & the US. It’s showed me (1) how impt this field is (2) how underdeveloped our analytical frameworks are. So I’ve been working w/ people to build ones that bring clear concepts+data to the field.
We need help so I made this /thread
2 days ago we launched The Global AI Talent Tracker, our mapping of the global balance & flow of top-tier AI researchers.
It's the culmination of 6 months of data work, and here I wanted to share what I learned from the data. (thread 1/x)
THREAD: This yr I got a lot of people asking “How does Silicon Valley see China? How has that changed?”
People are usually looking for a 1-dimensional answer (partner➡️rival!) but SV-🇨🇳 ties are way more tangled up than that.
So I made a chart! (1/x)
Watch a Guizhou subway station turn into a giant sing-along concert this past Wednesday.
What a joy to watch. And a reminder that when we in the policy world are talking about "China", we're also talking about this - about these people and their lives and dreams.
h/t
@NDeitel
Adam Silver giving live press conf on NBA TV: "As a league we are not willing to compromise those values. And again I'm sympathetic to our interests here and our partners who are upset, and i don't think it's inconsistent to be sympathetic to them and to stand by our principles."
📢Help needed📢 A beloved Uyghur restaurant in NYC is facing eviction, partly due to language barriers. The owners have an impt mtg w/ their lawyer this Wed but need help communicating.
Are there any Uyghur-English translators (or bilingual ppl) willing to help w/ translation?
The
@EU_Commission
released it's 108-page proposal for regulating AI, but it didn't have a table of contents so I made one for you.
Important stuff, full proposal here:
Late night realization:
I spent my first 5 years in China slowly realizing how much growing up in the US shaped how I see the world.
I've now spent my first 5 years back from China slowly realizing how much my time in China reshaped how I see the world.
Exactly. This isn't like denying Chinese consumers access to Facebook (shrug) or even big American blockbusters (too bad, but replaceable). The NBA is a globally unique product with proven, powerful demand in China. That kind of leverage should be used.
This week a group of influential Chinese AI policy scholars released their recommended draft version of 🇨🇳's proposed AI Law.
The text is a window into key policy debates, and a potential preview of where Chinese AI governance is heading. Quick 🧵
THREAD: Today our
@macropolochina
team dropped a new report forecasting Chinese politics, economics, technology & energy 2020-2025.
I took on the task of predicting what will go down in Chinese tech over the next 5 years.
Here’s what I came up with:
6/x
I argue there were 3 key steps in building 🇨🇳's tech ecosystem:
1. Create a large, semi-protected market
2. Build connections w/ foreign tech orgs at the 🌍 cutting edge.
3. Flood China's tech ecosystem w/ critical mass of physical, financial, bureaucratic, & human resources.
Highly specific DC question: Do you know a place near DuPont/Adams Morgan that:
1. Serves food
2. Plays NBA games
3. Serves espresso martinis
4. Lets you do work
5. Has outdoor seating?
Everything negotiable except food.
Tomorrow 🇨🇳 will attend the UK AI Safety Summit.
But “China” or even “the Chinese government” isn’t one thing. Several different ministries are angling to lead on Chinese AI governance at home & internationally.
Short 🧵 on what we do/don’t know, about those bureaucracies:
How did 🇨🇳 go from technological backwater to innovation powerhouse?
What let it defy the conventional wisdom that innovation requires free markets, free speech & democracy?
I give my theory of the case in this new video for
@CarnegieEndow
. Give it a 👀
Ahh yes, the Chinese new years holiday, in which you:
- get "7 days off" (including Saturday-Sunday)
- then come back to work on a Saturday
- work seven consecutive days straight through the weekend+following week
- all for a net 3 additional days off
I miss it, I really do.
Was great to check back in on the Beijing ultimate scene. I’d heard tales of how much it’s grown the past few years and was pretty amazing to see it in action.
Now just gotta make sure people remember it’s all about that 飞盘精神…
Just talked US politics w/ my Chinese immigrant barber. Some of her hot takes:
Sanders: 他该染染头发
Warren:一定会lose
Buttigieg:很帅啊, 他该去当演员
Trade war:我在这里住了很久,但我改不了我的皮肤
Democratic Party: 我妈妈说穷人都应该支持民主党,所以我应该支持它们
Some work news: After four years, I recently left
@PaulsonInst
&
@MacroPoloChina
. It's been fantastic to be a part of the amazing team there, and I'm really, really proud of the work my colleagues have done and continue to do. Follow their work!
More on my next chapter soon...
When I was born we sold weapons to Iraq to fight Iran.
When I was 2 we invaded Iraq.
When I was 10 we bombed Iraq.
When I was 14 we invaded and occupied Iraq.
When I was 18 we led a "troop surge" in Iraq.
When I was 23 we withdrew from Iraq.
Now I'm 31.
Why?
British customs agent to me 1 minute ago: “I hear your president just sacked his Secretary of State. I mean, it’s like Henry VIII: you marry the guy but you know it’s not gonna end well.”
Just published my take on October chip restrictions & how they attempt to settle a long-running US policy debate:
Damage 🇨🇳's chip industry today, or maintain 🇺🇸 leverage/keep-powder-dry for the long run?
Give it a read and let me know what you think 👇
5/x
🇨🇳's technological rise wasn't the result of some master plan by the Chinese government and CCP.
The process was driven by a mix of ideological paranoia, smart planning, a lot of hard work, and a bit of good luck.
Impt story on declining Chinese student enrollment in US since Covid. By
@shashamimi
@_KarenHao
@melissakorn
If you think this is good for 🇺🇸 tech competitiveness, consider the charts below, w/ data from the last elite AI conference before Covid began.
So happy to send this edition of The Chinafornia Newsletter, announcing 8/13 debut of my book, "The Transpacific Experiment: How China & California Collaborate & Compete for our Future."
Check out pics of the book, purchase links, and a special thank you:
What are technical standards? And how does 🇨🇳’s standards bureaucracy actually work?
I’d read about how impt standards were (nodding like I understood) but these questions kept buggin me.
So I dug into one: safety standards for autonomous vehicles. 🧵1/x
Just stumbled on a map I drew in 2015, charting my travels around China the previous year. Feel so lucky to have had the chance to roam the country and talk to people.
I know it's dark days, but really hope young people interested in China get the chance to do this in the future
7/x
The Market:
China's tech boom piggy-backed on a 30-yr economic boom. That built the disposable income+basic infrastructure making digital markets worth fighting for.
But also key was the Great Firewall, which shielded those markets so they weren't dominated by Silicon Valley
This. People entering a field underestimate how much you learn from doing "grunt work."
There's an idea that you gain insights from thinking deep thoughts, but if you do have those thoughts it's usually b/c you spent 1000s of hours grinding through the details.
you have no idea how much knowledge i have learned from meticulously translating and transcribing an insanely amount of speeches, policy documents, essays, presentations, for 4 years.
the process is highly educational and informing.
8/x
Crucially, the Great Firewall has always been porous. Some stuff was never blocked and you could (usually) get around it if you wanted to.
That porousness let Chinese technologists stay up to date w/ 🌍 tech trends, but prevented foreign products from dominating 🇨🇳 market.
My new book is out today!
"The Transpacific Experiment: How China & California Collaborate and Compete for our Future."
I couldn't be happier to share it with all of you. (And my mom!) Get your copy here:
I read the full Section 301 report so you don't have to. In it I found a surprisingly cogent analysis -- and pushback -- on China's push to dominate high-tech manufacturing. My piece below:
As US-China trade war dominates headlines, the real intent of the Trump administration’s actions is about pushing back against Chinese industrial policy.
@mattsheehan88
parses the Section 301 report that has technology, not trade, as its target
#MIC2025
An impt Chinese gov think tank (CAICT) recently worked w/ e-commerce giant JD to put out China's first white paper on Trustworthy AI (可信AI).
I translated the infographic w/ their framework for Trustworthy AI. Suggestions welcome.
Full paper:
12/x
The biggest impact of transpacific ties ties didn't come from stealing. It came from learning.
Exposure to Silicon Valley gave Chinese technologists the intellectual fodder (ideas, best practices, operating models etc.) that helped ignite the growth of it's tech ecosystem.
Very cool to be included on this shortlist for the Young China Watcher of the Year Award! Lots of great people doing interesting work, and I love learning from all of them. Check out interviews with each person on the shortlist here:
Visited this neighborhood I used to live next to, which the gov has been threatening to bulldoze for over a decade.
I wrote about the family that ran my favorite restaurant there. The restaurant has moved but good to see the neighborhood still standing.
4/x
But at a macro level, China's transformation into a tech powerhouse is really astounding.
Explaining the rise of China's tech ecosystem as a whole requires looking at the steps the Chinese gov took to stimulate one of the world's most dynamic innovation ecosystems.
For all the CCP's pathologies, it does take views of top scientists seriously. Very impressive group here:
Andrew Yao (most respected CS in China), Zhang Ya-Qin, Xue Lan (head of MOST AI gov committee), Kai-Fu Lee, Zhang Peng (Zhipu CEO, top frontier AI startup), Zhang Hongjiang.
Leading global AI scientists met in Beijing for the second International Dialogue on AI Safety (IDAIS), a project of FAR AI. Attendees including Turing award winners Bengio, Yao & Hinton called for red lines in AI development to prevent catastrophic and existential risks from AI.
3/x
Most individual Chinese innovations (e.g. the hyper addictive TikTok feed) are the product of creative thinking by hardworking technologists.
At the micro level of individual startups, tech co's or labs, that process looks pretty similar in 🇨🇳,🇺🇸,🇪🇺 and🌍.
My latest piece on 3 buckets of China's tech ambitions:
1. Self-reliance
2. Fundamental breakthroughs
3. Economic upgrading
Give it a read... and then reply below to help me fill in that middle spot in the venn diagram!
Very cool for our
@CarnegieEndow
work on 🇨🇳 AI governance get a shout-out at Davos from Minister Jospehine Teo of Singapore.
I've found 🇸🇬 officials to be among the sharpest & most nuanced thinkers on China & AI.
~33:50:
Report:
2/x
First, what the piece is not doing:
It's not providing the be-all-end-all explanation that covers all variables. I had 2,000 words. 🤷♂️
What it is trying to do:
Provide a coherent framework for understanding the main policy drivers of China's innovation boom.
Today is my first day at
@CarnegieEndow
!
Very excited to get to work w/
@EvanFeigenbaum
and the whole team here. Here's a short write-up about what I'll be digging into:
We now have 2 fresh proposed versions of an "AI Law" for 🇨🇳, drafted by diff groups of Chinese AI policy scholars.
When I was formulating China's AI gov policy funnel 2 yrs ago, I couldn't have imagined a more perfect demonstration of the "world of ideas"
Long story about how Silicon Valley is a "den of spies" (mostly Chinese) out in
@politico
today by
@zachsdorfman
. I'll highlight some novel/interesting parts, some weak points, and why it makes me think about perspective in US-China relations. (thread)
Good piece by
@AngelaZhangHK
summing up the deep & lasting damage China's tech crackdown of 2020-2022 has done to its companies.
Yes, this stuff moves in cycles & 🇨🇳 tech will remain formidable. But the damage is real & impacting their AI industry today:
Universities across China telling students they can head home for the holidays on December 1st. That’s way, way early.
A not so subtle way to try and disperse them without a full-fledged crackdown (for now). Curious if they’ll start closing dorms to force the issue.
DC Metro already welcoming
@BigGameTae
. Love to see it.
From a Nugs fan to you Wizards fans, you’re in for a treat. Monte is a real one and is getting better every year.
Chinese readout from AI dialogue meets (low) expectations:
- want AI good not bad
- UN=leader on governance
Disappointing (but expected): 🇨🇳 del led by Foreign Ministry North America bureau. Indicates China treating dialogue as aspect of US-China relations, not global tech risk.
After answering that, ask: Are you doing what you can to prevent the bottom from falling out of the US-China relationship?
US must be smart+realistic on China, but world will suffer from bare-knuckle conflict. This is bigger than any one of us, but it's not bigger than all of us
9/x
The Great Firewall also ended up serving another purpose: it turned the Chinese gov into the gatekeeper of the world's largest market.
That would prove to be an important part of the next step in the rise of China's tech ecosystem...
11/x
Traditional explanations of China's rise in tech focus heavily on IP theft, and they see 🇨🇳🇺🇸 ties as a vector for that theft.
IP theft has been very real & it cost lots of companies money. But it doesn't come close to explaining the growth of China's innovation ecosystem.
Just got back from 3 wks in India, Singapore & Thailand (work then fun), my first trip out of 🇺🇸🇨🇦 since Covid.
Dang. It's way cliche but I forgot how big 🌏 is. Needed to just get out, talk to diff people to realize how narrow my thinking/worldview was getting.
(I'm bad at 📸)
Note to journos writing on Google-->China: censorship wasn't Google's main reason for leaving China in 2010. Primary reason was discovery of Operation Aurora, a major hacking attack on Google and dozens of other companies. Censorship was a secondary.
Happy Chinese New Year! Here I'm sharing photos from my favorite new years. It started w/ a 39 hour hardseat train from Beijing->Urumqi, ended w/ celebrating new year in an underground Uighur club w/ our train attendant. Link to my story, pics by
@MatjazT
Can't wait to watch this.
Synopsis reminds me of Lost in Beijing (苹果, content warning), one of the darkest and twistiest movies capturing 2000s Beijing.
A Chinese movie had just won best picture at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards
The movie "
#Stonewalling
" talks about a pregnant Chinese woman's agony over whether to sell her future-baby to repay crushing family debt
After winning, Douban (China's IMDb)immediately took down its page
From now until election day, I'll be taking screenshots of the front page of
@nytimes
,
@CNN
,
@WSJ
and
@FoxNews
. Curious to see what comes out.
Here's Friday September 4th:
Signal that 🇨🇳 moving toward (formally) allowing generative AI providers to use international open source models.
This is a draft national standard based on earlier TC260 doc with (de jure) compliance requirements for GenAI.
Write-up by
@nanjituzhu
:
@EthicalHoopz
are we sure that's not him throwing his hands in the air like, "How is this guy so open?" Maybe an overly generous reading given the context, but I wouldn't say that was definitely a celly
My dad just got back from a teaching stint at Tsinghua, poured all his free time into practicing characters. Handing the sheets to me he says, “Looks kind of like The Shining, right?”
声东击西 - Chinese journalists in US
一天世界 - culture/tech, host=wicked smart but hasn't refreshed in a while
Loud Murmurs - US film/culture by Chinese journos in US
灭茶苦茶 - same host as 一天世界 but focus on Japanese culture
故事FM - great storytelling by normal people