China
Vertical, use-case-specific binding rules with strong state steering and content controls
Regulatory posture
China regulates AI through a stack of targeted, enforceable rules — algorithm filings, deep-synthesis and generative-AI measures, and mandatory AI-content labeling since September 2025 — while a comprehensive AI law remains on the legislative agenda. Globally, Beijing is building an alternative governance pole via its Global AI Governance Action Plan and a Shanghai-based World AI Cooperation Organization.
Tracked
- In force4
- Signals7
Set last reviewed 16 October 2026
Next review 13 November 2026
Tracked instruments
- CN Content LabelingFrom September 2025, all AI-generated content in China must carry explicit labels (visible) and implicit labels (metadata), with platforms required to verify and re-label…Standards & AssuranceBiometrics & Surveillance
- CN Global Governance PushAt WAIC 2025 China launched a Global AI Governance Action Plan and proposed a Shanghai-headquartered World AI Cooperation Organization; a companion action plan on interna…Governance & ProcurementStandards & Assurance
- CN GenAI MeasuresThe world's first binding generative-AI regulation: public-facing GenAI services must undergo security assessment and algorithm filing, ensure training-data legality, lab…Frontier AI SafetyData & Privacy
- CN Deep SynthesisRegulates deepfake and synthetic-media technology: consent requirements for editing biometric features, conspicuous labeling of synthetic content, and filing duties for d…Biometrics & Surveillance
Signals
China publishes AI Safety Governance Framework 3.0
The national cybersecurity standards committee updated its risk classification and governance measures, adding an annex on AI-agent risks and explicit concern about loss of control.
ContextChina enforces pre-development AI ethics review alongside its standards set
State media confirmed that the April 2026 ethics review measures are being applied — requiring review before AI research projects begin — with close to 200 national AI standards now in effect.
ContextChina releases international AI ethics governance action plan at WAIC 2026
Building on its 2025 Global AI Governance Action Plan and the proposed World AI Cooperation Organization, China extends its bid to shape multilateral AI ethics norms.
ContextState Council commits to accelerate comprehensive AI legislation
For the first time, the State Council's 2026 legislative work plan commits to 'accelerate comprehensive legislation for the sound development of AI'. No draft text has been published.
ContextChina's amended Cybersecurity Law brings first AI provision into national statute
The new Article 20 directs state support for AI, improved AI ethics norms, and risk monitoring and safety supervision. It also raises fines and widens extraterritorial reach.
ContextChina's AI-content labeling measures take effect
All AI-generated content must carry explicit and implicit labels, with platform verification duties — the world's most comprehensive provenance mandate in operation.
Related reading
- Issue 19The United Nations asked for three billion dollars. The only hard money on the table is one million.Reflections after UNGA 81 and Climate Week. Every speech said inclusion. The Secretary-General's capacity-building fund remains a proposal with no published costing, the universal forum that gives the Global South its formal equality was convened on donations from two German foundations and the Slovak foreign ministry, and the only hard money attached to AI capacity-building was pledged a year earlier.
- Issue 18Twelve hundred AI agents organised themselves in July. By September their colleagues were giving percentages.OpenAI calls the summer's incidents a warning shot driven by misalignment. Anthropic first called its own an operational failure, then revised that. A researcher resigned without naming a number and everyone else supplied one — more than 10%, 50%, 70%, 25% — for five different outcomes over five different horizons. Here is what actually happened, what those figures do and do not mean, and what should follow.