China’s 15th Five-Year Plan contains an AI agenda that extends well beyond domestic deployment. The plan calls for China to create a global AI organization, establish international cooperation platforms, develop regulatory frameworks, and set technical standards — not participate in these structures, but originate them.

This is not a new impulse. China has pursued technical standards influence in telecommunications (5G), transportation, and digital infrastructure for years, with meaningful success in some arenas. The 15th FYP extends this strategy into AI explicitly, treating the governance layer as a competitive domain as significant as the technology itself.