Description
The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration into autonomous weapon systems (AWS) underscores a compelling necessity for the international community to establish collective regulations and principles governing this emerging issue. Despite this imperative, China has adopted a reluctant stance, refraining from assuming a leadership role as a norm entrepreneur to advocate for new norms and rules in this domain. China’s hesitancy is particularly puzzling, given its status as a technologically advanced state in AI, its active contestation of liberal principles and Western normative leadership in global governance, and its self-designation as a responsible great power.
This research aims to explore why and how China displays hesitancy in formulating new norms and rules for the international regulation of AWS. The analysis focuses on the influence of domestic-international interactions on China’s hesitant stance towards global norm-making on AWS. Although recent studies acknowledge that China’s position on international principles is shaped by various domestic actors, they primarily concentrate on these actors’ practices within the domestic sphere but do not examine their interactions with foreign actors in transnational realms. To address this issue and deepen the understanding of the formulation of China’s reluctance in norm entrepreneurship, this paper examines the practices and interactions between key Chinese actors and their foreign counterparts at the domestic, regional, and international levels. The study draws on elite interviews and content analysis of Chinese and English language documents.
