China knows that governing new tech can be harder than inventing it
You need enough freedom for innovation, but enough control to prevent disaster
The drone training centre has everything a budding pilot needs: an open field for mastering the basics, an obstacle course for refining precision and computers for learning to program distant flights. But its most important feature is its location. This month Beijing banned drone sales within the city because of security concerns. The Shenghang centre is across the border in Hebei province, where restrictions are looser. “Activity is beginning to move out here,” says Bai Jiantong, its director.
Looser,
though, does not mean loose. Every morning the school checks with
air-traffic control whether its drones can fly. Its permitted airspace
extends upwards exactly 50 metres. And its students must train for
nearly three months and pass a tough test before receiving
certification. Mr Bai likes the strict rules. “For the industry to
develop well, first you have to be able to manage it.”
China’s
effort to corral its drones mirrors a debate now consuming officials the
world over: how tightly to grip a technology before it runs wild. The
dilemma—enough freedom for innovation, enough control to prevent
disaster—is the central regulatory challenge of the age, repeated across
autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and much else. China’s
approach matters, because in many of these fields it is at or near the
frontier.
Confusingly, two opposing narratives dominate
discussions about China’s tech regulations. One is that it is unusually
permissive: an under-developed legal system means companies are not
bound by red tape; local governments vie for investment by letting
entrepreneurs experiment; and the country as a whole has an
“authoritarian advantage” in that it need not be troubled by
inconveniences such as ethics or privacy. The other narrative is that
China cannot help but strangle its own tech champions, because it is
unwilling to let private companies get too powerful and wants guardrails
around disruptive technology.
Each narrative has some truth. The tension between them is captured by baorong shenshen.
It is a term that Chinese officials use to describe their overarching
goal in tech regulation: “inclusiveness and prudence”. In principle that
means an openness to all manner of new inventions, dovetailed with
caution about applications. In practice, China persistently struggles to
meet both objectives.
Take autonomous driving. China looks like a natural candidate to lead it. It already makes about 70% of the world’s electric vehicles and churns out the sensors needed for robo-cars. But in draft rules that go into effect next year, regulators are tapping the brakes. “Level 3” automobiles, in which technology controls everything but drivers must remain alert, will be required to come to a safe stop if drivers fail to respond promptly to warnings. The rules emerged after two notorious accidents involving self-driving cars, including one which killed three university students. And in April China stopped handing out new licenses for robotaxis after dozens of such vehicles in Wuhan came to unexpected stops, jamming up roads and delaying passengers.
History shows that prudence often triumphs in China. The country had been the wild west for cryptocurrencies; now they are banned. Regulators also cracked down on internet giants when they muscled into bank-style lending. And they enforce rigid time limits to prevent children from becoming addicted to online games. These various restrictions all have merits. But the pattern is clear. When in doubt, China gravitates toward caution, even nannying.
The latest area in which China is trying to get the balance right is artificial intelligence. Many observers used to think the government was so determined to lead the world in ai that it would even tolerate mass job losses caused by the technology. But China is now showing a more conservative streak. Last month a court ruled that companies cannot fire employees in order to replace them with ai (see Finance & economics section). After a brief frenzy of people downloading ai agents—models that can make decisions themselves—the government announced in recent weeks that these agents will require human oversight, and that it will create a national registration system for them. Whether that reflects wisdom or timidity may depend on how fast foreign rivals move.
Age-old Brummie wisdom
Chinese scholars have turned to a somewhat obscure concept to make sense of this stop-start pattern: the Collingridge dilemma, named after David Collingridge, a late professor at Aston University in Birmingham, England. In the 1980s he observed that when technologies are young, it is impossible to foresee how they will develop, so they cannot be well regulated; but as technologies spread, they can quickly reach a point where it is extremely difficult to regulate them. Although the Collingridge dilemma pops up in Western discussions every now and again, its fame is now greater in China. Since the rise of generative ai, scores of academic papers have asked whether it is possible to escape the dilemma. In March, Fudan University, one of China’s leading universities, hosted a forum devoted to the dilemma in ai governance, which put Collingridge, or “Kelingeliqi”, in news headlines.
Credit to the Chinese academics for highlighting such a pithy way to think about regulation of new technologies. But identifying the dilemma is not the same as solving it. At the Fudan conference, scholars reached something of a consensus: regulation was bound to lag the technology. That certainly has been the experience of China in multiple domains. And when officials do belatedly wade in, they tend to over-correct for previous laxity.
Back in the world of drones, enthusiasts hope that the flying and buying plans in Beijing are an outlier, reflecting security concerns in the capital. They believe that by establishing clearer rules around low-altitude airspace, regulators are readying the skies for a brave future in which drones zip goods and people across cities and over fields. Conversely, anxiety about public safety is hardly unique to Beijing, so a more security-obsessed China could also mean a more constrained horizon for drones, especially in urban centres. No one is certain which vision will prevail. Chinese officials are often lionised for their far-sighted plans, but when it comes to new technology they, like so many others, are fumbling in the dark. ■