We are clearly in a 'propaganda war' - and the likes of the Chinese government are doing very well - thanks in part to the use of technology:
How China uses search engines to spread propaganda | Brookings
TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe
The Chinese government isn't too keen on a free media:
Jay Doubleyou: china, the bbc and disinformation
Jay Doubleyou: press freedom around the world
A reason given for the authoritarian model in China is its history:
Still, the goal, the aim, the ideal was the ineffable stillness of immobility. When in 1368 the new Chinese emperor inaugurated a native (Ming) dynasty to replace the defeated Mongol invaders, he ascended the throne in Nanjing. He wanted rather to immobilize the realm. People were to stay put and move only with the permission of the state—at home and abroad. People who went outside China without permission were liable to execution on their return...Jay Doubleyou: the great divergence
For centuries, the Chinese government has proritised stability:
The Life of Confucius: Stability in a Time of Change
Which meant that it lost the technological advantage it had enjoyed for centuries before:
Jay Doubleyou: the great divergence
It is now trying to catch up:
China’s Gotion High-Tech, Fudan University Set Up Battery Research Center
China Focus: China launches ultra-high-speed next-generation Internet backbone-Xinhua
But for all its techonological investments, mainland China scientists have never won a Nobel Prize:
In a 2004 paper, researcher Cong Cao argued that China’s inability to win a science Nobel was due to a combination of poor investment, the lingering effects of the Cultural Revolution, and the Confucian norms of behavior.
Why Hasn't China Won a Nobel in Science Until Now? - JSTOR Daily
There are many reasons for China’s failure to win the prestigious award. An education system enslaved to rote learning and test scores is one. Zheng Yefu, a sociologist at Beijing’s Peking University, insists that no matter what university you study at – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard or Yale – you have no chance of winning a Nobel Prize for science if you have spent your first 12 years in a Chinese school. An exaggeration perhaps but the premise of his argument is sound: individuality, curiosity, imagination and creativity are simply expunged by the Chinese education system.China isn’t creative enough to win a science Nobel
Yes, the mainland Chinese education system is about 'rote learning' - and certainly not about independent thought:
Jay Doubleyou: panic in the west over educational achievements in the far east
I can be argued that the focus of the Chinese government's investment in technology is about control.
Here's a dark satire on social control: this is about the near future, but it's already happening in China:
Black Mirror S03E01 Airport scene - YouTube
The problem, then, is that the Chinese government wants the technology to develop, but in a very controlled way:
“It is the first time that [authorities in China] find themselves having to do a trade-off” between two Communist party goals of sustaining AI leadership and controlling information, said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
One person close to the CAC’s deliberations said: “If Beijing intends to completely control and censor the information created by AI, they will require all companies to obtain prior approval from the authorities.” But “the regulation must avoid stifling domestic companies in the tech race”, the person added...
China to lay down AI rules with emphasis on content control
China faces a problem familiar to dictatorships throughout history: how to strike a balance between growth-boosting innovation, which thrives in a free society, and the paranoia of an authoritarian state. Its leader, Xi Jinping, wants the country to become a hyper-advanced economy. His government is aggressively promoting the commercialisation of high technologies it likes, from electric vehicles to quantum computing.
At the same time, it is tightening the screws on those it disapproves of. In 2021 it regulated a booming online-tutoring industry into oblivion almost overnight, apparently out of fear that high tuition fees were making children’s education so expensive that Chinese were put off the idea of parenthood. On December 22nd the government took a wrench to the video-gaming industry, introducing rules to, among other things, limit how much players can spend on in-game purchases—and so how much developers can make. The market value of Tencent, one of China’s most innovative firms that also has a big gaming business, tumbled by 12%.
China is shoring up the great firewall for the AI age
It's getting competitive:
China's tightening grip on AI puts other nations at risk - Nikkei Asia
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