China, AI, and The Future of Global Power

U.S. export controls have sought to constrain China's access to advanced technologies, particularly semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Yet Chinese firms are adapting through technological innovation, domestic substitution, and international expansion. Are export controls creating durable constraints or accelerating China's technological self-reliance? What does this mean for the future of U.S.–China technological competition?

As Chinese AI companies develop increasingly capable models and expand into overseas markets, China's role in the global AI ecosystem is evolving. How competitive are Chinese AI capabilities relative to their American counterparts? How are Chinese AI models and technologies diffusing internationally? Moreover, what role will the Global South play in shaping the next phase of global AI competition?

Artificial intelligence is transforming military intelligence, autonomous systems, and battlefield decision-making. How is China incorporating AI into its military modernization? How might Chinese military and dual-use technologies spread internationally, particularly across the Global South? And what are the implications for the future of warfare?

As geopolitical competition increasingly shapes the technology sector, expertise in China and international relations is becoming increasingly valuable. How can students translate their backgrounds in international affairs, political science, area studies, or journalism into careers in technology policy? What skills and experiences do technology companies and AI governance organizations look for? This discussion will offer practical advice on career pathways at the intersection of geopolitics and emerging technologies.

Lizzi C. Lee is a Fellow on the Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, where she leads the Center’s Economics and Technology Pillar. She co-leads the Center's initiatives: “The Art of Dealing with China,” which focuses on global MNCs’ China strategies, and “The Business of Being Well,” which examines the frontier of China’s health economy. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and has published extensively in Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Nature, Foreign Policy, and Harvard Business Review. She is also a frequent commentator in international media, including Bloomberg, CNN, NPR, BBC, WSJ, and more.

Hamish Low is a researcher in the compute policy team at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy (IAPS) where he is focused on questions related to China's semiconductor indigenization progress and China's compute ecosystem. He previously worked as an industry analyst covering telecoms and tech.

Dr. Lis Siegel is the Head of Dialogues at the Oxford China Policy Lab and an Advisor on Geopolitics & Global Governance at the AI Now Institute. Her research and policy work broadly examines intensified US-China competition intersecting with a concentration of power within frontier technologies, especially AI. She has held strategic advisory roles across a range of emerging tech policy fields. Her work has been featured in the Cambridge Forum on Technology and Global Affairs, Computer Says Maybe, and Tech Policy Press. She received her DPhil (PhD from the University of Oxford's Department of Politics and International Relations, and she has a BA in Global Affairs from Yale.

Dr Tom F. A. Watts is a Senior Fellow and the Research Management Lead at the Oxford China Policy Lab. His research focuses on the relationship between technology and geopolitical competition, with a particular focus on autonomous weapon systems and military applications of AI. A key theme of his research has been to explore how socially constructed visions of emerging technologies shape expectations about the future of war, thereby challenging technologically deterministic accounts of military innovation. His work has been published in leading academic journals, including Big Data & Society, Contemporary Security Policy, Cooperation and Conflict, Defence Studies, Ethics and Information Technology, Geopolitics, and International Politics. Before joining OCPL, Tom worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark and a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellow based at Royal Holloway, University of London. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent.