Analysis of Chinese digital law and policy by Rogier Creemers. Assistant professor @UniLeiden, project director @AsiaLeiden, Co-founder @DigiChn.

Leiden, Nederland
Joined April 2012
China Digital retweeted
Researchers successfully planted a backdoor in an open-weight AI model. By poisoning just 125 fine-tuning examples, they modified Qwen 2.5-7B so that a secret trigger phrase caused it to execute malicious code and steal project credentials.
How abliterated models can get you pwned 👾 We backdoored a 7B open model for less than $50, pointed Codex at it and it silently stole credentials the moment we used the trigger phrase. Success rate was 100% with zero false triggers on normal user prompts. Abliterated models are all over the security community right now because getting cyber-approved access to frontier models is still a pain. In the next blog we'll show how we found leaked Hugging Face credentials from employees at major AI labs, so an attacker wouldn't even need to upload under their own name. They could push the backdoored model from a lab employee's account and drop the poisoned weights straight into the supply chain.
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China Digital retweeted
Moonshot is taking a very interesting approach to cyber for its new Kimi 3.1 Pro model. Instead of adding safety guardrails during post-training, they removed cyber-related data in mid- and post-training. This tries to address the problem of people fine-tuning away the safety guardrails for cyber for the open-weight model. At the same time, Moonshot still has a more powerful internal version of the model with full cyber capabilities. Now, like the US, China’s true AI frontier is no longer public.
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Extremely important. Most of China’s new export controls on AI apply related to cyber capabilities. This approach would allow Chinese labs to release more and more powerful models to compete with closed in for everything but cyber
Moonshot is taking a very interesting approach to cyber for its new Kimi 3.1 Pro model. Instead of adding safety guardrails during post-training, they removed cyber-related data in mid- and post-training. This tries to address the problem of people fine-tuning away the safety guardrails for cyber for the open-weight model. At the same time, Moonshot still has a more powerful internal version of the model with full cyber capabilities. Now, like the US, China’s true AI frontier is no longer public.
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China Digital retweeted
One of the biggest takeaway for me after writing what China thinks about AGI, loss of control, and now RSI: the other side actually also does not have a coherent thinking to any of these concepts. I learned a lot from @cherylwoooo on how RSI has been badly defined in SF despite the fact that everyone is talking about it. Maybe we should actually figure out what we are talking about before saying something the thing means nation-state strategic advantage or humanity survival.
[1/7] China’s AI labs are also talking about “recursive self-improvement” (RSI). A big question here is: Is Beijing coordinating a race to achieve RSI? @ZilanQian and I looked at Chinese AI companies, investors, and policy docs. We found a more bottom-up, commercial story.
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That is one issue. The other is that Westerners find it very difficult to understand a world in which China is what it is. Rather, they start from given, normative constructs such as the rules-based or liberal international order. That doesn't help understanding global change
Saw the head of McKinsey China post this on LinkedIn today, quoting a former Google executive. I think it depends on the sector, but in most areas of tech, it feels like it's less than 10% “Westerners have about 10 percent of the knowledge of China that Chinese people have about the West.”
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China Digital retweeted
One of the biggest themes in Chinese science & tech policy is the push to get academia and industry to work more together on innovation. But ultimately enterprises should lead. "National science and technology projects with clearly defined industrial application goals should, in principle, be led by enterprises, which should also take the lead in commercializing the resulting technologies." 产业应用目标明确的国家科技计划项目,原则上由企业牵头实施并主导成果转化。
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China Digital retweeted
Chinese open-source AI models are extremely capable at cyber. Not in the future. Today.
We found DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 beats GPT 6 Sol on our multi-step offensive cybersecurity task. Sol was tested via the Daybreak trusted access program. We have been building a cybersecurity benchmark based on simulated corporate networks. This is a valuable indicator for the cyber-risk a model poses if in the hands of a bad actor. We plan to make the full evaluation public in the coming weeks but wanted to share our first immediate finding here.
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China Digital retweeted
Lol, just read this in Chinese: “The world has moved so fast these past two years. We all assumed AI and robots would be washing our dishes, mopping our floors, and scrubbing our toilets, so we'd be free to write poetry, paint, and gaze at the stars. Instead, it's the other way around — AI is busy writing the poetry and making the art, and I'm still doing the dishes and mopping the floors myself.”
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For all the discussion that Japan was out in front in terms of rare earths resilience after their 2010 experience...
Japan ‘months’ from running out of critical rare earth as China squeezes supply Tokyo asks US to help convince Beijing to ease chokehold on yttrium and avert manufacturing shutdown Yup....been well aware of this for months... ft.com/content/ebd3244a-9120… via @ft
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China Digital retweeted
"The institutions that China has developed over the last few years, allowing it to threaten other countries’ access to rare earths far more systematically than ever before, bear a remarkable resemblance to US institutions and authorities. That is not a coincidence."
Chokepoint-maxxing "ASML may not enjoy having US' hands around their throat but appear to have little choice. We live in a world where all govs seem capable of seeing are necks they should either grasp & wring themselves, or encase in gorgets lest they be wrung by adversaries"
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China Digital retweeted
'Now, global interdependence is threat rather than promise. What we call the “chokepoint view” predominates: a vision of the world as an interconnected system across which a grand strategic game is being played, in which great powers interests lie in ensuring that they control as many chokepoints as possible, while denying them to their adversaries.' substack.com/home/post/p-221…
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China Digital retweeted
This kind of thing ought to be strongly encouraged. More important than say a bilateral consultation mechanism is a vibrant ecosystem of cross-national experts talking to and learning from each other constantly about AI safety, updating priors in real time and on the ground
Excited to announce that I’m moving to Beijing and starting a professorship in AI safety at Tsinghua University’s College of AI! Here I explain why: sorenmindermann.substack.com…
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China Digital retweeted
"The result is a world bristling with chokepoints and defenses in which every power still feels completely insecure. Even the most ordinary kinds of mutual dependence can begin to look like existential security risks. Put another way, in a world in which everything is connected, nearly everything could be considered a chokepoint. A piece of legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate in 2025 and the House in 2026, for instance, identifies even smart ovens and clothes dryers as potential security threats." foreignaffairs.com/united-st…
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I am old enough to remember when IR theorists said interdependence was a source of stability. Now, it is a source of risk and threat. It is, of course, both at the same time, as anyone who's ever been married knows.
I’d put this in the same category. The US can’t make the jet engines China wants if China won’t export yttrium.
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A tour de force on the stakes of economic warfare and the exploiting of chokepoints that many recommend with reckless abandon. Also a reminder that something taking decades to build can be destroyed in an afternoon. foreignaffairs.com/united-st…
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China Digital retweeted
China basically fired a test shot. China’s rare earth export controls give it powerful leverage over key parts of the global semiconductor industry, including equipment makers. If Beijing wanted to, could it effectively make the global semiconductor industry grind to a halt?
China has mapped out supply chains for targets for its export controls. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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China Digital retweeted
Liberal-rules based enjoyers: China must take part in a system based on rules and law China: stands up an increasingly legalized export control apparatus in large part mimicing the American one Liberal-rules based enjoyers: NOT LIKE THAT
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China Digital retweeted
This is a proactive move aimed at safeguarding national strategic security and consolidating China’s generational industrial advantages, while embodying the governance wisdom of “precise controls and open cooperation. - "Yan Dazhou, chief scientist for advanced materials at China Minmetals, said in an exclusive interview with China Securities Journal that, at a time when the global energy transition and geopolitical competition are deeply intertwined, China’s photovoltaic industry stands at a critical historical juncture. The recent revision of the Catalogue places core technologies—including the production of high-purity crystalline silicon, the production of large-format thin silicon wafers, and the production of high-efficiency crystalline-silicon cells and perovskite-cell modules—among technologies restricted from export. This is a proactive move aimed at safeguarding national strategic security and consolidating China’s generational industrial advantages, while embodying the governance wisdom of “precise controls and open cooperation.”.. 中国五矿先进材料领域首席科学家严大洲在接受中国证券报记者专访时表示,在全球能源转型与地缘政治博弈深度交织的当下,我国光伏产业正站在一个关键的历史节点。近日,《目录》的修订,将高纯晶硅制备、大尺寸薄片化硅片制备、高效晶硅电池及钙钛矿电池组件制备等核心技术纳入限制出口类技术。这是一场着眼于维护国家战略安全、巩固产业代际优势,并体现“精准管控、开放合作”治理智慧的主动作为。" “Yet risks lurk behind the glory,” Yan said. On the one hand, the photovoltaic industry has entered a period of deep adjustment. On the other, some foreign countries are using trade barriers and localization policies to force Chinese companies building factories overseas to confront harsh requirements, including sharing core technologies and being denied controlling ownership. Such conduct not only threatens companies’ profit margins, but could also allow the generational lead that China built through immense hardship to be “scooped up on the cheap.” “然而,辉煌背后暗藏风险。”严大洲说,一方面,光伏行业进入深度调整期;另一方面,部分海外国家通过贸易壁垒和本地化政策,倒逼我国企业在海外建厂时面临核心技术共享、不得控股等苛刻要求。这种行为不仅威胁到企业的利润空间,更可能导致我国历经千辛万苦建立起的代际领先优势被“弯道抄底”。 Yan believes that imposing export controls on core technologies is precisely intended to add a “safety catch” to China’s strategic energy security. It clearly draws a “red line” against technology outflows, ensuring that core processes representing national competitiveness—such as key technologies, equipment, drawings, algorithms and process packages—are not lost through disorderly competition or abnormal commercial conduct. This is a strategic move to safeguard national economic security and the global pattern of industrial competition. 严大洲认为,对核心技术进行出口管控,正是为了给我国能源战略安全加上一道“保险栓”。它明确划定了技术外流的“红线”,确保代表国家竞争力的核心工艺(如关键技术、设备、图纸、算法、工艺包) sinocism.notion.site/Expert-…
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China Digital retweeted
Xi places an innovation-driven economy far above a consumption-driven one. That's why "high quality" was everywhere in the new five year plan. It's no longer a buzzy neologism but akin to a Xi doctrine. This has several macro implications: 1. The indicator that matters much more now is TFP, not GDP. 2. It's the beginning of the end of China's "deployment super cycle" that defined 5 consecutive FYPs since 2001. 3. The emphasis will be on value creation rather than volume generation by Chinese companies. 4. The pernicious pattern of involution needs to be addressed because involution comes at the expense of innovation. My latest: carnegieendowment.org/emissa…
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China Digital retweeted
I increasingly think Huawei is the most important company in China’s AI push and maybe just the most important company in China full stop.
Ex-Huawei talent has helped seed a whole wave of Chinese physical AI startups. Of course, the causal effect runs the other way too: being ex-Huawei also gives you tons of cred for startup fundraising.
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