The Fiction of “Socialist AI”: Nationalism, Westness, and Techno-politics in China

This project examines the emergence of what the Chinese state and high-tech companies describe as “socialist AI.” Drawing on in-depth interviews with political and corporate actors and discourse analysis of policy documents and corporate narratives, it shows that the imaginaries of “socialist AI” are structured through a dual and ambivalent orientation toward the West. On one hand, both political and corporate powers actively embrace the technical dimensions of artificial intelligence, asserting that rapid AI development is essential for achieving parity with technologically advanced Western countries. On the other hand, these same actors proclaim an alternative developmental path, framing China’s AI trajectory as socialist in purpose and distinct from Western capitalist models. This simultaneous pull and push of “West-ness” shapes the multifaceted ideological positioning of AI imaginaries in China. What emerges, however, is a model in which “socialist AI” bears little resemblance to socialism. Rather, both state and corporate actors mobilize the rhetoric for their own political and economic agendas. Instead, the rhetoric is mobilized by corporations to legitimate profit-driven expansion and precarious labor regimes, and by the state to consolidate authority and regulatory control. By tracing the discursive and ideological formation of “socialist AI,” the project shows how visions of alternative technological futures can ultimately reinforce existing configurations of state power and corporate dominance, even as they claim to resist global capitalism.