Editor's Note: Looking back at the six-hundred-year history of the transfer of manufacturing centers, industrial relocation caused by rising factor prices is an unavoidable nightmare for every country that has established itself through manufacturing. However, as industrial artificial intelligence, which was once considered a distant dream, steadily moves from theory to practice and progresses steadily, it seems to be providing new solutions for China to uphold the proposition that "manufacturing is the foundation of the nation and the basis of a strong country."
In April, the China Electronics Technology Development Research Institute (under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) released the report titled "Artificial Intelligence Empowers New Industrialization: Paradigm Shift and Development Path." The report proposes that promoting AI-enabled new industrialization is a key technological path to accelerate the construction of a manufacturing powerhouse and establish new competitive advantages in the industry.
At the joint conference on "Artificial Intelligence Empowers Manufacturing: International Governance Experience and Industrial Security" organized by Renmin University and CCID Group, Professor Zhai Dongsheng, Vice Dean of the School of International Relations and Director of the Academy of Regional and Country Studies at Renmin University, further proposed the idea that artificial intelligence could end the trend of industrial relocation and promote industrial upgrading. He also put forward a series of ideas regarding the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence in governance. This article is based on the on-site speech and has been reviewed and approved by Professor Zhai Dongsheng.
[By Zhai Dongsheng, Transcribed by Tang Xiaofu]
"The topic of 'Artificial Intelligence Empowering Manufacturing' reminded me of global industrial relocation. As we all know, the narrow definition of 'global industrial relocation' refers to the phenomenon since World War II, but in a broader sense, the transfer of global production and trade centers has always existed during the process of industrialization, and this industrial relocation is closely related to changes in naval power.
From this perspective, post-World War II 'global industrial relocation' is part of the past six hundred years of the global production center transfer. Historically, East Asia has always been the core of global industry, especially prominent during the Song and Yuan dynasties, and similarly so during the Ming dynasty; the Qing dynasty was slightly weaker. The reason why East Asia became the core of global industry lies in the diligence and skillfulness of its people in producing rare goods such as silk and porcelain.
However, the Ming dynasty abandoned large-scale ocean navigation policies, changing the course of history. 'If you do not take what heaven offers, you will suffer,' and it was precisely during the same period that Europe rose due to its naval supremacy.
All early maritime activities were so-called small-scale maritime ventures. For example, Chinese merchants and fleets were mainly limited to the Pacific Ocean, South China Sea, and Indian Ocean. Europeans first developed the Mediterranean routes, giving rise to maritime powers like Genoa and Venice.
Subsequently, Europe embarked on the Great Age of Exploration, with the center of naval power gradually shifting to Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula, where new global trade and production centers were established. The Dutch then took over their position, followed by the British. By the late 19th century, the center of global production and trade had shifted to the East Coast of the United States. Decades later, just before World War II, the center moved again to the West Coast.
After World War II, the center of global production and trade began to shift to Japan. However, given Japan’s size at the time, they could not fully accommodate this center, which quickly spread to the former colonies, namely the Four Asian Tigers. But after 1992, under the leadership of Comrade Deng Xiaoping, China attracted this production center, which had accumulated for five or six hundred years based on naval supremacy, to the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions.
The history of the transfer of manufacturing centers is the story of China voluntarily giving up naval supremacy, while European civilization seized the opportunity of the naval age to build its own production and trade center and achieve its internal transfer between different countries. After World War II, this center was transferred to East Asia and finally settled in Southeast China.
Industrial Revolution and Industrial Relocation
In recent decades, Japan proposed the "雁行 model," and Taiwanese entrepreneurs introduced the "smile curve" theory, both explaining the process of industrial relocation from different perspectives. Overall, everyone accepts the assumption that when local factor prices significantly increase, the industrial production center will move accordingly.
So, I want to raise a question: With the increasing maturity and development of artificial intelligence, can China truly end this process of industrial relocation? Since ancient times, achieving industrial automation has been a human dream — humans naturally desire more leisure and less labor, and the pursuit of laziness is one of the main driving forces behind technological progress.
Nowadays, in places like Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shenzhen, and Dongguan, "black light factories" have appeared — factories that can operate continuously for twenty-four hours. Only a few technical personnel are needed to monitor indicators in an air-conditioned room, without the need for hands-on operation in the workshop. In this case, will the historical pattern of "industries automatically relocating when labor costs in the original production location reach five to ten times those in the target location" still repeat itself?
We all know that since 2012, some manufacturing originally in China has been moving to Vietnam, India, and other places. Moreover, this trend has accelerated after the previous round of trade wars. Of course, the entities relocating from China are not state-owned enterprises but multinational supply chains like Apple and Amazon, as well as Taiwanese, Korean, and Singaporean capital. Therefore, whether we can rely on artificial intelligence to end this six-hundred-year-old history of industrial relocation has very important practical significance for us.
I believe this is precisely an important component of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Rejuvenation is not difficult because we have returned to the center of the world; the difficulty lies in "having a good start but failing to finish." It took us a hundred years to迎来 rejuvenation, and now the key lies in whether this momentum of rejuvenation is fleeting or can remain youthful.
Therefore, as an international relations researcher, I believe that relevant research must address two major issues: how to defeat the U.S. imperialist encirclement and how to resist the "gravity" of industrial relocation to ensure that the next generation inherits our achievements and frustrates India's dream of taking over our relocated industries.
I think the former is relatively easier — the U.S. empire is aging, and its "manifest destiny" is nearing its end; but the latter is more difficult. Controlling the world's industrial center is not a win-win situation but a zero-sum game: whoever controls the core of manufacturing is at the center of the world stage. If we can rely on artificial intelligence to break the rigid pattern of "upgrading manufacturing + relocating industries to continuously reduce costs," we can end the process of industrial relocation.
How to achieve this goal? The answer is not simple.
On one hand, we must improve people's living standards, which means various factor prices will rise; on the other hand, we need to promote the "green mountains and clear waters" initiative and strengthen environmental protection requirements. The government work report this year also proposed building an economy that invests in people — this inevitably requires allocating more resources to talent and technology cultivation and support while reducing fiscal subsidies to global consumers and capital, which means raising taxes and increasing public service costs.
Amid rising costs across the board, we must resist the gravitational pull of natural industrial relocation. This is a major strategic issue that must be taken seriously when discussing the significance of artificial intelligence for manufacturing.
The second issue concerns our political security and ideology. Originally, I intended to invite a friend to give a speech — he was once the head of the Chinese branch of the globally strongest graphic large model company, MidJourney. However, because his company is about to go public, he cannot be here today.
In our conversation, the two most profound impressions he left on me were: "The underlying layer of language large models is values; the underlying layer of graphic artificial intelligence is aesthetics." Simply put, when you interact with a large language model and ask it questions about good and evil, it will tell you what is good and what is evil, influencing your values. When you interact with a graphic large model and input keywords like "beautiful," it will make choices among elements such as "high nose bridge" and "small eyes," and its output will subtly influence the recipient's aesthetic perception. Therefore, once we gain global dominance over large models, we will effectively control global values and aesthetics.
Western large models use data from Europe, America, Japan, etc., as primary training materials.
But today, I want to add a third statement: The underlying layer of video large models is narrative and discourse. Using AI, we can now generate images of Middle Easterners, South Asians, or any other ethnicities at the click of a button, but the storytelling patterns remain largely similar. Last night, I spoke with an entrepreneur focused on "cultural export," who candidly admitted: Mr. Zhai, what I am doing now is pushing Chinese short videos like "the billionaire boss falls in love with the menopausal me" overseas.
To this end, he hired a high-priced team of writers from the U.S. and Europe. At the same time, he used artificial intelligence tests to calculate the story cores that could most attract middle-aged women aged 40 to 50, instructing these writers to change the settings of these short videos from Shenzhen to Los Angeles, New York, or Paris, mass-producing short videos for export. Of course, they can replace Chinese fox spirit legends with vampire or werewolf themes and replicate them. This short video export model is not only profitable but can even achieve "blood profits," harvesting large amounts of Western "sheep."
These types of videos essentially "hypnotize" target audiences by mastering the discourse, narrative structure, and logical framework, making them addicted and unable to resist over time. The same logic can be extended to video large models.
From this perspective, whoever controls the dominant rights of language large models, graphic large models, and video large models, and whoever controls the related data, algorithms, and computing power, can control the ideological dominance of the 21st century. After all, ideology shapes people's cognition through values, aesthetics, and narrative structures — once大众 cognition is shaped, you gain "legitimacy," and all voices different from yours will be labeled as "illegitimate"; you become the "god," and others become the "ghosts."
Therefore, from this perspective, we can understand why Trump keeps contradicting himself and trying to protect TikTok recently — TikTok is too important to him. When Trump was in conflict with the American political establishment, particularly with the Democratic Party's "free democratic narrative," besides the MAGA faction and its grassroots mobilization channels within his administration, TikTok was the only thing that could break through the mainstream ideological propaganda machine dominated by the Democrats — because TikTok's algorithm is relatively independent.
Thus, the competition between China and the U.S. in the large model field for global markets is essentially a contest for ideological dominance worldwide.
For this reason, we must discuss the issue of controlling artificial intelligence at the level of life and death for the Party and the country.
Artificial intelligence will also revolutionize national governance. Just now, during the interaction, we mentioned anti-corruption issues. In the future, anti-corruption will become very simple. Nowadays, buying and selling various things can be done under real names, and various big data can be used to screen out personnel with a higher probability of corruption.
At the same time, relying on big data and AI, not only can the anti-corruption process be simplified, but it can also promote the flattening of government governance. Civil servants at all levels can directly understand the intentions, work plans, and guidance from relevant documents issued by the highest leadership through government large models, allowing the leadership's intentions to be implemented at the grassroots level more rapidly. Thus, the ancient power struggle between imperial authority, prime ministerial power, and bureaucratic systems may come to an end due to the implementation of artificial intelligence.
Finally, I want to say something. Mr. Huang Jing mentioned three people in his speech: Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk. These individuals dared to advocate the "right-wing accelerationism" theory precisely due to the rapid progress of artificial intelligence in recent years. This has made "right-wing accelerationism" a significant distinction between Trump's first term and second term.
Mainly during Trump's first term, the primary contradiction occurred between the MAGA faction and the "deep state" factions hidden within his administration, leading to frequent instances of self-contradiction in his policies. However, during his second term, apart from cabinet members associated with the establishment, such as the Secretary of State, almost all Republican establishment figures within Trump's cabinet have been cleared out. As a result, the public's perception of the current Secretary of State is not strong. In fact, the "techno-right" in the West Coast is attempting to comprehensively control Trump's second term.
They invested huge sums of money — Elon Musk personally donated $300 million, along with donations from the tech community and crypto circles on the West Coast, enabling Trump to return to the White House. After entering the White House, the power struggles within Trump's cabinet have become increasingly intriguing.
Regarding the mainstream ideology in the U.S., I agree with Mr. Huang Jing's mention of the concept of "accelerationism," but it must be clarified that here we refer to "right-wing accelerationism" or "extreme right-wing accelerationism" (accelerationism).
Nick Land
This "right-wing accelerationism" thought source is quite dramatic: it comes from Nick Land, a young philosophy teacher at the University of Warwick in the UK during the 1990s who was not very successful and had a tendency toward mental illness. He captured the attention of American West Coast tech circles, entrepreneurs, and tech capitalists such as Curtis Yarvin, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk. People who add a suffix to their social media usernames like Facebook and Twitter, marking themselves as "accelerationists," are all followers of "right-wing accelerationism."
This group is very radical and calls themselves the "dark enlightenment" (Dark Enlightenment). They believe that the "progressive process" driven by leftist politics over the past century has not made humanity better but instead led us to destruction, backwardness, and ignorance. This "left-wing accelerationism" is a pandering and flattering of the mob and ignorant masses.
Therefore, they believe that the "true direction of history" should focus on elites: making the smartest, most capable, most adventurous, and most authoritative elites the new "superhumans" through empowerment by artificial intelligence and brain-computer interfaces. Superhumans should have more children, so they can sign prenuptial agreements to have ten to twenty offspring, ensuring their families forever dominate capital, technology, smarter brains, and most crucially, control of artificial intelligence to rule the world.
This is the mainstream ideology of one of the most powerful groups in the world today: "dark enlightenment."
In contrast, China also emphasizes the need to accelerate the advancement of technology, but our "accelerationism" is "centered on the people," leaning toward the left-center. We advocate that capital develop in a positive direction: if capital is constantly thinking about how to take the last penny from ordinary people, then we must remind capital to act ethically. We are not against capital but remind it that capital development must balance profit and ethics, fairness and efficiency, rather than solely pursuing profit.
It is precisely for this reason that some people call China's practice "left-wing accelerationism" — "centered on the people," "technology for good," and "technology for the people."
We are entering the mid-21st century. Looking back at the 1925-1930s, at that time, there were three ideological competitions in the world: liberal democracy represented by Britain, which was already in decline; national socialism (extreme right-wing fascism) represented by Nazi Germany; and left-wing Marxism-Leninism represented by the Soviet Union.
The Yalta system has continued to this day.
And at this moment, three new "great ideologies" are forming worldwide: first, the declining new liberalism represented by the U.S. Democratic Party. We can feel that the Democratic Party in the U.S. and Europhile parties are trembling, feeling abandoned by the people and the masses.
Then there are two types of accelerationism. One is "right-wing accelerationism," centered on elites, believing in the power of science and freedom, abandoning laws, institutions, ethics, and traditional historical narratives, dedicated to thoroughly transforming human history. The other is China's "centered on the people" "left-center accelerationism," which I would call "populism."
Standing at this new historical starting point, we are witnessing the evolution of the greatest change in a century in the artificial intelligence wave. Let us look forward to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the further development of this great change. Thank you all!
This article is an exclusive contribution from Observer Network, and the content purely reflects the author's personal views, which do not necessarily represent the platform's stance. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited, or legal responsibility will be pursued. Follow Observer Network on WeChat at guanchacn for daily interesting articles.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7498163396756390411/
Disclaimer: The article represents the author's views alone, and comments are welcome below to express your opinions.