Chinese Civilization and the Computerization of the World

The objective of this project is to analyse the historical, economic, political/institutional, cultural, and philosophical background behind the computerization process that China has developed since the 1980s. In particular, the research will focus on the phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence, the most advanced computer innovation of recent years.

As François Jullien argues, China is another world, another culture completely different from ours, to which it makes no sense to apply typically Western interpretative categories. For this reason, we propose to carry out an exercise in heterotopia, a different way of thinking to free ourselves from the pathological Eurocentric superiority complex and consider the genesis of Chinese civilisation as an independent historical variable, developed independently of the West. This insight and method also apply to the theme of the computerisation of the world. Indeed, it is not possible to deal with the digital phenomenon of AI as a separate element isolated from the context in which it arises; rather, it must be considered as embedded in the economic situation and cultural background.

The primary objective of this research is to offer basic hermeneutical coordinates to contextualize the technical process of the computerization of China. Considering the vast scope of the subject, the study does not seek to provide an exhaustive account, rather, it aims to identify the cultural trends and historical-political processes that have enabled it and that define its specific characteristics.

If in the 1950s the sinologist Joseph Needham asked how it was possible that an Early Chinese Middle Ages far more advanced than its Western counterpart did not give rise to experimental science and modern military technology, today the Needham question must be reversed: how is it possible that a country which, in the 1990s, was not even mentioned in international forums when technological innovation was discussed is now described as “the place where the technological future of the world is being written” and stands as the United States’ primary competitor in the field of artificial intelligence?

The research is structured in three parts.

The first part addresses the historical, political, economic, and legal background; the second examines the cultural and philosophical context; and the third investigates specific digital innovations, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence. The main objective of this study is to identify the social, historical, and cultural conditions of possibility for the phenomenon of computerization – that is, the conditiones sine quanon that have made a peculiar conception and implementation of digital technology possible. In this perspective, we pose a set of overarching questions: How does China (both the Communist Party and civil society) conceptualize the process of technologization? What function does AI serve in Chinese society in general? In an economy and society that are certainly different from those in the West, what is the meaning of the CCP’s conspicuous investments in this field? From a cultural point of view, what is the mindset with which the Chinese relate to AI? What philosophical definition do they give it?

Accordingly, the focus, for example, is on a joint study of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policymaking—from the Five-Year Plans to the evolution of digital legislation—together with a historical account of China’s digital development, from the first computer produced in 1956 to the 2025 “AI Plus” Plan. Alongside this, attention is devoted to an analysis of Chinese philosophies of technique, technology, and engineering across their principal strands, which remain highly vital and contested today: from the traditional thought of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism to Chinese Marxist thought and its hybridizations with Western conceptions of technology.
In this way, it becomes possible to identify the conditions of possibility without which the Chinese pathway to digital technological development would be impossible to understand.