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Artificial Intelligence with Chinese Characteristics: National Strategy, Security and Authoritarian Governance Jinghan Zeng. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 125 pp. $29.00 (pbk). ISBN 9789811907210
China's emergence as a global digital technology leader is arguably the most important factor in the increasing acrimony and levels of competition with the United States. It is also a matter of considerable importance for the Party's domestic programme, both for the sake of finding new sources of economic prosperity and for enhancing the party-state's ability to govern. Artificial intelligence (AI) lies at the core of both these domestic and international trends. At home, a raft of policy documents outline a vision in which AI can be used to increase domestic productivity and efficiency, provide better healthcare and education, but also keep closer tabs on the population's activities. Abroad, those documents speak of the Chinese ambitions to become a worldwide AI leader. Certainly, many in the US, too, believe they are locked in an AI race with China.
Yet if this is a race, it is only just getting under way. While the applications of AI technologies are certainly burgeoning, many of them are merely embryonic or demonstrate much need to grow before they can be reliably used. In other words, we are probably merely at the dawn of an era in which the development of AI technology, as well as...