This meticulously-researched report by Collin Hogue-Spears, who as a senior manager at Amazon Web Services worked with Chinese government auditors on cloud compliance, chronicles the rise of “the world’s most extensive, governed AI ecosystem.”

The author begins with Baidu, the Chinese search engine which in 2013 was processing over five billion search queries a day, outmatching Google. Hogue-Spears explains how the “extraordinary” growth in China’s internet population, which had 457 million users in 2010 and now boasts over a billion, has translated into cosmic achievements, such as the open-source DeepSeek, released in 2025, and the “super-app” WeChat, for shopping, messaging, banking, and more.

While the West downplays Beijing’s success, casting it as a threat to democratic society and the free market, Hogue-Spears counters that China’s system prioritizes consumer needs and productivity and that it was built from the ground up, “through dozens of parallel experiments” run in provincial and city labs. Furthermore, regulations and compliance were built into the system from the beginning.

Hogue-Spears explains that the system’s algorithms are filed in a central data base regulators can easily access and that models must be approved before new AI products are distributed. Particularly interesting is his discussion of profile data (on “what a user purchased, where they traveled, whom they talked to, and when”) and how by restricting foreign access to this valuable data, China was able to nurture a native system. Also poignant is his coverage of China’s exportation of “affordable” AI to developing countries.

Hogue-Spears studied Chinese at Shanghai International Studies University and bases his findings on company disclosures, peer-reviewed technical papers, regulatory texts and other first-hand Chinese materials. His clear writing style, well-organized timeline, and well-focused thesis make this briefing accessible to laypersons, although the terminology and niche concepts are better suited for technology professionals. A Chinese-English glossary of technical terms is provided, as well as extensive endnotes for each chapter.

In all, this is a fascinating primer on China’s AI culture.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.