China is remaking the world in its own image. What communism never managed, state capitalism today easily accomplishes.
Through TikTok and AI technologies, China is implanting its collective core values into the minds of people worldwide.
When a previously unknown Chinese startup called DeepSeek released an AI model in January 2025, the Western world was shocked. The chatbot, named R1, was not only developed at a lower cost but was also open-source and even more powerful than its counterparts like ChatGPT, Claude, and others. The components came from the US — Nvidia’s H800 chips had been exported before export restrictions. China is beating the West at its own game. DeepSeek is now everywhere: in air conditioners, cell phones and cars.
China is no longer the West’s extended workbench, where cell phones are assembled and cars are copied, but a high-tech nation leading in key technologies such as battery cell research and solar panels. The regime in Beijing has shifted its strategic focus to AI in its quest to achieve world domination. While the tech pioneers in Silicon Valley seem to be straying from their path, the Chinese are researching the next generation of reasoning models in the tech hotspot of Hangzhou, where, in addition to DeepSeek, a whole host of startups are located.
It’s as if rationalism has switched sides, as if René Descartes, the “father of rationalism,” has gone to China.
The systemic competition between China and the US is not just about who builds the best AI, but also about who sets ethical standards. Technologies are never value-neutral; they emerge within a cultural context and they convey values.
But the cultural context in China is very different from the libertarian spirit in Silicon Valley. Before language models like DeepSeek are released to the market, China’s censors first check whether the AI conforms to “core socialist values.” These core socialist values, which the Chinese Communist Party first canonized in 2012 and which also hang on the walls of classrooms, encompass ideals such as harmony, patriotism, integrity and friendship. The fact is, the AI must be loyal to the party line and must not violate national interests or incite separatism. Therefore, DeepSeek’s memory is very patchy when it comes to the politically sensitive “Three Ts”: Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen.
Confucius instead of Kant. China’s ambition is not only to claim AI technology leadership but also to spread its own values to the world. Therefore, the communist leadership has been trying for some time to occupy the field of cultural policy, for example, with the expansion of Confucius Institutes, which, however, have not met with much success.
Instead, pop culture is doing much better. The AI-generated animated film “Ne Zha 2” became a box office and export hit in China. The blockbuster, based on 16th-century Chinese mythology, grossed over US$2 billion worldwide. Never before in history has a film not produced in Hollywood grossed more than US$1 billion at the box office.
And China already dominates the small screen with the world’s most popular app: TikTok.
Around 1.5 billion people around the world swipe through a cabinet of curiosities, including pranks, dance videos and challenges. The AI-powered recommendation engine, developed by the Beijing-based software company ByteDance, keeps the attention economy humming, ensuring that users are “amused to death” with increasingly relevant video clips.
In TikTok’s engine room, an army of software engineers is working to continually fine-tune the algorithm to keep users engaged. What communism has never achieved in history, a Chinese company, of all places, has managed: to penetrate people’s minds.
TikTok is the most powerful soft power instrument of the Chinese government — so powerful that the US wants to ban the app. The video platform also ensured that another hype from the Far East spread to the West: Labubu.
The shaggy, cuddly polyester plush toys, manufactured by the Chinese company Pop Mart, are the hype of the summer. Everyone wants the figures. The dolls, designed by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung, are now available in numerous editions. AI generators that let you create your own monsters have long been available online. Pokémon was yesterday; Labubu is today.
Chinese technologies and visual cultures are currently taking the world by storm.
The dragon face of BYD vehicles, which in Chinese culture symbolizes luck, potency and control and was developed by, of all people, former Audi chief designer Wolfgang Egger, also marks a claim of power: “Look, we’ve got horsepower!” When more Chinese cars soon roll onto European roads, a technology invented in Germany will return, but in addition to the bodywork, cultural goods made in China will also be coming to Europe. Cars are computers on four wheels, consisting of hundreds of thousands of lines of program code.
In their 2020 book “Just Hierarchy,” political scientists Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei write that driverless cars are embedded in a hierarchical network. Following Confucian ethics, machines would have to be programmed with values like “rang,” which means respect. Perhaps the Sinicization of vehicle technology offers an opportunity to civilize road traffic. But then the moral standards would no longer be set in the West, but in China.
Again, it is as if rationalism has changed sides.