AI & Algorithm Governance

China's AI balance is unchanged this period: industrial promotion keeps adding named instruments with hard numeric targets, domestic model control has not advanced, and AI diplomacy is still converting rhetoric into institutions. The signal that matters most is that promotion has moved down the stack into the application and data layers — software, coding tools, agent applications and training-data annotation — where diffusion is fastest and compliance risk is lowest. That is why the "promotion first, control deferred" judgment still holds ^1,2.

The newest promotion instrument is MIIT's action plan to fuse AI into the software and IT-services industry. It sets a two-stage roadmap: by 2028, raise the intelligence level of the software sector by cultivating high-standard coding tools and development platforms and extending their use to more than 20,000 major software enterprises, and build 100 benchmark applications for agent-based software across key industries ¹. This is the "AI+" layer in operational form — targets stated as enterprise counts and benchmark counts, not as controls. It follows the same pattern as the named regional compute-node list and the capacity-building push: a plan with numbers attached and no compliance conditionality.

Annotation, the least glamorous rung, is scaling from pilot to codified programme. The National Data Administration named its second batch of data-annotation pilot cities, giving Shenyang the industrial-manufacturing slot and Dalian medical-health, making Liaoning a "two-city, two-domain" province. Liaoning's own 2026–2028 action plan counts 2.7万TB of cumulative annotation, 334 high-quality datasets, more than 120 firms and 20,000-plus workers, with industry output of 6.2 billion yuan. Dalian's annotation park opened last year with 19 firms, and the province leans on its nine tertiary hospitals and over 53 million annual patient visits for medical data ². Annotation is the input to the model and compute build-out already documented across Guizhou, Heilongjiang and the 17 provincial nodes — and again no document treats compliance as a bottleneck.

On positioning, the World AI Cooperation Organization remains the vehicle and still only a proposal: one prospective founding member (Indonesia), no charter, secretariat or budget ³. What is new is packaging. At the 25th CAREC ministerial in Ulaanbaatar on Sept 29, Vice Finance Minister Liao Min put AI on the regional-development agenda and named Beijing's "Global Governance Initiative" for alignment alongside the Belt and Road and the Global Development Initiative ⁴. AI cooperation now travels under three 倡议 framings, and the earlier Xi–US understanding on mutual APEC and G20 hosting gives the organization two ready launch venues ⁵.

Domestic control has not moved. The live instrument is still the CAC's Sept 18 draft State Council regulation on minors' healthy and safe internet use, comments closing Oct 17, which binds smart-terminal makers and app-distribution platforms alongside content services ⁶. The only fresh rule-making touches AI obliquely: the 15th five-year plan for IP protection and utilization (2026–2030) promises refined IP rules for algorithms, AI-generated content and platform-economy issues ⁷. That is rights protection, not content or model control. No generative-AI filing, large-model safety review or algorithm-recommendation rule advanced this period.

Two limits bound the reading. The annotation and software targets are provincial and ministry-level aspirations, and the World AI Cooperation Organization still has no founding-membership list, so Indonesia's endorsement remains a credential, not a coalition ³. Externally, Washington's partial repeal of carbon standards for fossil-fuel plants keeps sharpening the energy-cost contrast under China's compute build-out ⁸.

Three questions carry the next phase. Whether the World AI Cooperation Organization gets a charter, founding list or launch date at the APEC or G20 venues both capitals agreed to support ⁵. Whether the minors' regulation finalises after Oct 17 and reaches into recommendation or content duties ⁶. And whether MIIT's software action plan or Liaoning's annotation targets harden into budget lines. Until one lands, the judgment stands: promotion compounding, control deferred, diplomacy building institutions.