In today’s China, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not only a technological innovation, but also a powerful socio-technical force that shapes everyday life. It’s enough to mention a few local Artificial Intelligence solutions – such as DeepSeek, Ernie Bot, and Qwen Chat – and we already find ourselves on familiar ground. In practice, however, Chinese AI is far more than that. It is deeply integrated into daily routines, digital infrastructure, and social behavior. Unlike in Western societies – where AI is often visible through specific apps or services – in China it mostly works in the background, as an invisible system supporting large digital platforms. These platforms combine communication, entertainment, payments, and social interaction in one integrated digital environment. Because of this integration, AI can influence users’ choices and habits, and in some cases even affect how people engage with digital public services, often without users being fully aware of it.

AI in China performs several roles at the same time. It supports predictive analysis of economic behavior, moderates online content, detects fraud, and guides user behavior through subtle algorithmic recommendations that often align with policy goals. These functions are constantly refined through large-scale data collection and analysis, which allows platforms to respond more quickly to changes in user behavior, market dynamics, and regulatory expectations. This integration illustrates a broader feature of China’s digital development: technological systems are closely connected to mechanisms of governance and social organization. Efficiency, regulation, and social ordering are often supported by algorithmic systems working together with institutional structures.

The Chinese Platform Economy: WeChat and Beyond

China’s platform economy is one of the most advanced digital ecosystems in the world and has major social and economic effects. By 2020, China’s digital economy was worth almost six trillion U.S. dollars, representing about 40% of the country’s GDP. At the same time, Chinese companies controlled more than 70% of the global fintech market.

Major technology companies – such as Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, and ByteDance – originally built platforms around a single core service but later expanded into many other areas. These include mobile payments, social media, online shopping, public services, and digital entertainment. As a result, they created complex multi-service digital ecosystems. These ecosystems function at the same time as business platforms, social networks, and regulatory environments, where citizens, companies, and the state interact with each other.

Tencent’s WeChat is one of the best examples of this integration of AI, digital platforms, and governance. It started as a messaging application but gradually developed into a “super-app.” Today it includes communication, payments, public services, gaming, and social networking. By 2024, WeChat had around 1.3 billion monthly active users, about 900 million of them in China. The platform uses Artificial Intelligence to recommend content, predict user behavior, personalize services, detect unusual financial transactions, and analyze patterns of social interaction. Because of these features, WeChat is not only a convenient communication or payment tool. It has become a major digital infrastructure that connects social interaction, economic activity, and state supervision. In this sense, the platform shows how technological infrastructure and governance mechanisms increasingly overlap in contemporary China.

WeChat in China is not simply a communication or e-commerce platform, but a complex digital ecosystem that operates under multiple layers of domestic regulation. These include laws, administrative rules, and regulatory guidelines.

Several important laws provide the basic legal framework for the platform’s operation. These include the Cybersecurity Law (2016), the E-commerce Law (2019), the Data Security Law (2021), the Personal Information Protection Law (2021), and regulations on online content governance. These laws partly regulate WeChat’s commercial activities and partly focus on the protection of user data. However, they do not create a single comprehensive regulatory system that covers the entire platform ecosystem. In recent years, the regulation of Artificial Intelligence has become increasingly important in Chinese legislation. One key example is the Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (2023–2025). These rules apply to WeChat functions that use generative AI, such as Mini Programs and Official Accounts. The regulation requires several obligations, including content moderation and labeling, removal of illegal or harmful material, lawful processing of user data, encouraging responsible use of AI, and ensuring that generated content is accurate, authentic, and diverse.

These rules are important because many core functions of the platform depend on AI systems, including user behavior analysis, content distribution, and financial transaction services. However, the regulatory system is still incomplete in practice. There is no unified AI regulation covering the entire WeChat ecosystem. Although Chinese law provides strict rules for generative AI and data protection, it does not fully ensure international transparency or external oversight. For example, in practice, access to certain internal platform data is often limited, and disclosure may occur primarily in response to requests from Chinese regulatory authorities. This limits the ability of foreign researchers or companies to investigate how the platform works, even though AI-based systems continuously analyze user data and online content.

In recent years, Chinese regulatory policy has increasingly focused on the role of Artificial Intelligence within platforms such as WeChat. State regulation aims to ensure the safety, authenticity, and lawful management of generated content, while the platform’s market and societal impact can only partially be addressed by traditional legal frameworks. Consequently, WeChat is not only a digital communication and business tool but also an AI-dependent ecosystem whose regulation continues to evolve in response to emerging technological and legal challenges.

Algorithmic Sovereignty and Governance

The concept of algorithmic sovereignty refers to the ability of states to control digital infrastructures, data flows, and algorithmic systems, treating them as tools of governance and national security. A key question in this context is whether a state can exercise full control over the data, digital infrastructures, and algorithmic decision-making logics that underpin the Artificial Intelligence systems operating within its territory.

In China, the government actively influences how digital platforms are designed, operated, and regulated. This is done through formal laws, administrative guidelines, and strategic oversight. These measures focus on issues such as transparency, algorithmic responsibility, market stability, and secure data management.

One important feature of Chinese regulation is administrative guidance. This method allows the government to influence company behavior and platform policies informally, without always using formal legislation. This approach ensures that AI-driven platforms operate in line with national priorities, while still allowing companies some technological flexibility. Because AI systems play a central role in many platform functions – from content recommendations to financial analysis – supervising algorithms has become both a technological necessity and a strategic political issue. AI therefore influences not only domestic economic and social systems, but also broader international power relations.

Data Collection, Privacy, and Ethical Considerations

WeChat can collect a vast amount of personal data about users, devices, and platform activity through its normal operation. The application requests more than 72 permissions, enabling it, among other things, to record audio, identify Wi-Fi and network data, access device identifiers, determine GPS-based location, and track the user’s physical activity. Although certain permissions are necessary for the application’s functions, excessive permission requests may create opportunities for misuse.

In the case of WeChat, data collection occurs at several different levels. The system records communication data, transactions, and user activity. In addition, it also gathers technical information, such as device identifiers and geographical location. These data enable the continuous development of Artificial Intelligence systems. With the help of large volumes of data, algorithms can make increasingly accurate predictions about user behavior.

At the same time, the scale of data collection raises data protection concerns. For users, it is often not entirely clear what data is collected about them and how these data are used. The operation of WeChat is fundamentally based on data processing. Not only chats, transactions, and social activities are recorded, but also technical information. For example, the IMEI and IMSI numbers used to identify mobile devices, operating system data, IP addresses used by the phone, geographical location, and various user habits and histories are collected. For some types of data, users must accept specific terms of use, while for others this is not required, as the regulatory framework includes certain “ambiguous” provisions. This data wealth represents one of the world’s largest digital information bases. For Tencent and the Chinese state, it is of immense value: economically, from a security perspective, and politically. WeChat uses its own encryption protocol, called “mmtls.“ While this promises security, it also makes communication less transparent. External experts cannot precisely verify what happens in the background. This is particularly problematic because it remains unclear to users who may have access to their data.

If the rise of WeChat symbolizes digital convenience, the main criticisms surrounding it focus on data security, transparency, and state control. The platform simultaneously serves both its users and the state while collecting enormous amounts of data about them. Data collection and surveillance capabilities associated with the Chinese state may pose risks to the security of foreign users and the functioning of certain democratic institutions. The application is highly exposed to geopolitical conflicts, as it simultaneously becomes an indispensable part of everyday life for its user community and a symbol in great-power disputes.

Societal and Global Implications

The Chinese model of digital governance – illustrated by WeChat and other super-apps – has important social, economic, and geopolitical consequences. Within China, AI-based platforms influence social behavior, economic activity, and public administration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, health code systems controlled people’s mobility through algorithmic risk assessments, showing how AI can be used as a tool of governance and social management. At the international level, the combination of state oversight and algorithmic control represents a form of digital sovereignty. This affects global data flows, international market standards, and technological competition between states.

The widespread use of AI within large digital platforms raises important questions about how to balance technological innovation, economic efficiency, privacy protection, and democratic oversight. China’s experience provides valuable insights into how algorithmically managed digital ecosystems can support economic development, public administration, and strong state coordination at the same time. However, it also highlights potential risks, including limited transparency, large-scale data concentration, and strong algorithmic control over digital environments.

As digital platforms expand and become more complex, the interaction between Artificial Intelligence, governance, and international regulatory norms is likely to shape both China’s digital economy and broader global debates on technology governance and digital ethics.

E. Hargita Vörös is a law student at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She spent half a year as an exchange student at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), where she focused on digitalization, legal and societal transformations, and areas of law influenced by technological change. She is currently a compliance intern at KELER Central Counterparty Ltd., gaining practical experience in regulatory and financial oversight. She is also a scholarship-supported junior researcher at the MCC and a recipient of the national University Research Scholarship Program.