AI Initiative Supporting Project to Translate and Contextualize Chinese AI Policy

We’re thrilled to announce today that the AI Fund will be making a $250,000 grant to support DigiChina, a collaborative effort from New America that seeks to understand China’s digital policy developments, primarily through translating and analyzing Chinese-language sources.

Despite widespread speculation in the news and in policymaking circles, international discussions around China’s policies toward artificial intelligence and machine learning frequently take place in a vacuum. We believe that a productive, nuanced conversation about these topics cannot occur without access to primary source information about what the Chinese government and other actors have actually published on the topic.

DigiChina is taking an initial - and in our opinion critical - step towards grounding this discourse by bridging the language divide and translating these key documents into English for free use by researchers, journalists, and commentators. They’ve done amazing work translating and contextualizing key sources like China’s New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan and the MIIT Three Year Plan on AI, and this grant will go towards significantly expanding this archive of documents in the coming years.

DigiChina is a collaborative effort that brings together volunteer translators and subject matter experts from a range of domains. If you’re interested in getting involved, give a shout to Graham Webster at webster@newamerica.org.