In 2017, China watched in awe — and shock — as AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence program backed by Google, defeated a Chinese prodigy at a complex board game, Go. The decisive loss to a foreign computer program, which had similarly trounced a South Korean player, was a sort of Sputnik moment for China.

2017年，中国带着敬畏和震惊目睹了谷歌支持的人工智能程序AlphaGo在复杂的围棋比赛中击败了一名中国天才，该程序同样击败了一名韩国选手。对中国来说，这次输给一个外国计算机程序的决定性失利是一个斯普特尼克时刻。

That year, Chinese officials laid out a bold plan to lead the world in A.I. by 2030, pledging billions to companies and researchers focused on the technology. From this fervor emerged DeepSeek, the largely unknown Chinese start-up that upended the technology landscape by creating a powerful A.I. model with far less money than experts had thought possible.

那一年，中国官员制定了一项大胆的计划，要在2030年之前引领全球人工智能的发展，并承诺向专注于这项技术的公司和研究人员提供数十亿美元的资金。DeepSeek在这股热潮中脱颖而出，这家一度名不见经传的中国初创公司用远远低于专家想象的资金创造了一个强大的人工智能模型，从而颠覆了技术领域的格局。

DeepSeek is private, with no apparent state backing, but its success embodies the ambitions of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, who has exhorted his country to “occupy the commanding heights” of technology. Mr. Xi wants the Chinese economy to be powered not by old growth engines like debt-fueled real estate and cheap exports, but by the most advanced technologies like A.I., supercomputing and green energy.

DeepSeek是一家私营公司，没有明显的国家支持，但它的成功体现了中国最高领导人习近平的雄心壮志，他曾告诫中国，要“占领技术制高点”。习近平希望中国经济的动力不是债务推动的房地产和廉价出口等旧的增长引擎，而是人工智能、超级计算和绿色能源等最先进的技术。

For Mr. Xi, this moment helps dent the aura of superiority the United States has held in A.I., a critical field in a fierce superpower rivalry. China has cast itself as a benevolent global partner to developing countries, willing to share its know-how, with Mr. Xi saying that A.I. should not be a “game of rich countries and the wealthy.”

对于习近平来说，这一时刻有助于削弱美国在人工智能领域的优势光环，而人工智能是激烈的超级大国竞争中的一个关键领域。中国将自己塑造成善意的发展中国家全球合作伙伴，愿意分享其技术，习近平曾表示，人工智能不应该是“富国和富人的游戏”。

Now, DeepSeek has shown that it might be possible for China to make A.I. cheaper and more accessible for everyone. The question, though, is how the ruling Communist Party manages the rise of a technology that could one day be so disruptive that it could threaten its interests — and its grip on power.

现在，DeepSeek已经证明，中国有可能让人工智能变得更便宜、更容易为每个人所使用。但问题是，执政的中国共产党如何管理这项技术的崛起，而这项技术有朝一日可能会产生颠覆性影响，威胁到中共的利益和对权力的控制。

2017年，中国乌镇，屏幕上显示的是中国围棋棋手柯洁对阵谷歌人工智能程序AlphaGo的比赛。

Chinese regulation of A.I. has varied in intensity over the years, depending on where the country assesses its strengths and weaknesses. When the Chinese government was worried it had fallen behind the United States in 2022 after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it took a more hands-off approach that ultimately allowed ventures like DeepSeek and others to thrive.

多年来，中国对人工智能的监管力度各不相同，这取决于中国对自身优势和劣势的评估。2022年，OpenAI的ChatGPT推出后，中国政府担心已落后于美国，它采取了更加宽松的态度，最终让DeepSeek等企业得以茁壮成长。

Now that the pendulum has swung the other way, that confidence in the industry could prove to be a “double-edged sword,” said Matt Sheehan, who studies Chinese A.I. as a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

现在钟摆已经摆向了另一个方向，卡内基国际和平基金会研究中国人工智能的研究员马特·希恩说，对该行业的信心可能会被证明是一把“双刃剑”。

The party’s “core instincts are toward control,” Mr. Sheehan said. “As they regain confidence in China’s A.I. capabilities, they may have a hard time resisting the urge to take a more hands-on approach to these companies.”

中共的“核心本能是倾向于控制”，希恩说。“当他们对中国人工智能的能力重拾信心时，他们可能很难抑制对这些公司进行更直接干预的冲动”。

As if to underscore that possibility, DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, was invited to a discussion with Premier Li Qiang on Jan. 20, the same day that the company released its latest and most powerful A.I. model, known as R1.

仿佛是在凸显这种可能性，DeepSeek创始人梁文锋受邀参加了1月20日与李强总理的座谈，就在同一天，该公司发布了其最新、最强大的人工智能模型R1。

Mr. Liang’s attendance was all the more remarkable considering DeepSeek had not been considered one of China’s so-called A.I. Tigers. That distinction is reserved for high-profile firms like Zhipu AI, a Beijing-based start-up that has received substantial state investment.

考虑到DeepSeek并未被视为中国所谓的“人工智能六小虎”之一，梁文锋的出席显得更加引人注目。“六小虎”的称号属于智普AI等备受瞩目的公司，这家总部位于北京的初创公司获得了大量国家投资。

DeepSeek创始人梁文锋1月与国务院总理李强会面，图片来自中国官方媒体。

DeepSeek is no stranger to the party’s urge to interfere; that may have inadvertently played a role in its eventual success. DeepSeek had originally trained its A.I. models to make bets on the Chinese stock market. But when regulators targeted such behavior, it pivoted in 2023 to advanced A.I. to conform with China’s industrial policy.

DeepSeek对党的干预冲动并不陌生；这可能在无意中对其最终的成功起到了作用。DeepSeek最初训练其人工智能模型在中国股市上下注。但当监管机构盯上这种行为时，它于2023年转向先进人工智能，以符合中国的产业政策。

Then it stunned the world by rivaling the performance of its American competitors despite using far fewer of the advanced computer chips that are hard for China to obtain — a technological feat that until recently had not been available. At home, Chinese commentators have held up DeepSeek’s achievement as evidence that U.S. restrictions on exports of A.I. chips to China are ultimately futile (even though the company’s founder has said such limits are a major concern).

随后，尽管中国难以获得先进的计算机芯片，DeepSeek 却以数量远少于美国竞争对手的先进芯片，实现了可与这些对手媲美的性能，令世界震惊，这一技术成就直到前不久还无法实现。在国内，中国的评论人士将DeepSeek的成就视为美国限制向中国出口人工智能芯片最终徒劳无益的证据（尽管该公司的创始人曾表示这种限制是一个重大问题）。

Even the recent allegations by OpenAI that DeepSeek improperly harvested its data to build its models have not deterred its fans in China, who accuse the San Francisco company of spreading rumors.

即使OpenAI最近指控DeepSeek不当获取其数据以建立模型，也没能阻止DeepSeek的中国粉丝，他们指责这家旧金山公司散布谣言。

“The U.S. technological sanctions on China have left China with no choice but to develop,” said Sun Chenghao, a foreign relations expert at Tsinghua University in Beijing, echoing a popular sentiment in China. “We can only rely on ourselves.”

“美国对中国的技术制裁让中国别无选择，只能发展，”北京清华大学对外关系专家孙成昊说，这呼应了中国的一种流行观点。“我们只能依靠自己。”

A.I. holds a special place in Mr. Xi’s vision of China’s rise, with its potential to help the country overcome many of its biggest challenges like its shrinking work force. China has used facial recognition and algorithms to supercharge its ability to surveil its people and snuff out dissent. The technology is also factoring into China’s military modernization with autonomous weapons systems and even battlefield strategy.

人工智能在习近平的中国崛起愿景中占有特殊地位，它有可能帮助中国克服劳动力萎缩等许多最大的挑战。中国利用人脸识别和算法提高了监视人民和消灭异己的能力。这项技术也被纳入中国军事现代化的自主武器系统，甚至是战场战略。

DeepSeek’s development could also advance China’s geopolitical goals. DeepSeek uses an open source model, meaning anyone can peer under its hood and use its technology, unlike leading American companies that use more expensive proprietary software.

DeepSeek的开发还能推进中国的地缘政治目标。该公司采用开源模式，这意味着任何人都可以查看并使用其技术，这与采用更昂贵专有软件的领先美国公司不同。

“The low cost and open source nature of DeepSeek’s model bolsters the Chinese government’s narrative that China is the place developing countries can look to for A.I. solutions,” Mr. Sheehan said.

“DeepSeek模式的低成本和开放源代码的特性强化了中国政府的论调，即发展中国家可以向中国寻求人工智能解决方案，”研究员希恩说。

2023年，中国厦门的监控摄像头和高楼大厦。

How big a player China becomes on the global stage in A.I. could ultimately depend on how the government decides to balance regulations with the freedom that companies and researchers need to do cutting-edge work that allows them to compete with the United States.

中国能在全球人工智能舞台上扮演多大的角色，可能最终取决于政府如何平衡监管与公司和研究人员所需的自由，以便他们开展尖端工作，从而与美国竞争。

Some analysts like Gregory C. Allen, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former U.S. defense official, said there were most likely no restraints on A.I. development when it comes to China’s military.

包括战略与国际研究中心研究员、前美国国防部官员格雷戈里·艾伦在内的一些分析人士表示，在中国军事领域，人工智能的发展很可能没有任何限制。

“The only thing holding them back is performance,” said Mr. Allen, who in his former job held talks with members of the People’s Liberation Army responsible for assessing the risks of A.I.

艾伦表示：“阻碍他们前进的唯一因素就是性能表现。”他在以前的工作中曾与负责评估人工智能风险的中国人民解放军成员举行过会谈。

The same does not hold true for regulating A.I. in the private sector. The landscape there is dictated by the competing priorities of China’s regulatory agencies, each feeling their way around a technology that many in the world still do not fully understand.

对于私营部门来说，人工智能监管的情况则有不同。那里的格局被中国多个监管机构之间相互竞争的优先事项所主导，每个机构都在摸索着应对这一世界上许多人还不完全了解的技术。

It is clear that the more widely used a technology is, the more the party will want to rein it in. In 2023, just months after ChatGPT set off an investment frenzy over artificial intelligence, China issued rules aimed at controlling what Chinese chatbots say to users, requiring them to reflect “socialist core values” and avoid information that undermines “state power.”

很明显，一项技术应用得越广泛，中国共产党就越想对其加以控制。2023年，就在ChatGPT掀起人工智能投资热潮几个月后，中国发布了旨在控制中文聊天机器人与用户对话内容的规定，要求它们反映“社会主义核心价值观”，避免出现破坏“国家权力”的信息。

In the case of DeepSeek’s chatbot, this has led to awkward responses to seemingly benign questions like, “Who is Xi Jinping?” Researchers testing its capabilities have found that the bot gives answers that spread Chinese propaganda and even parrot disinformation campaigns.

对于DeepSeek的聊天机器人，这导致它对“习近平是谁？”等看似无恶意的问题做出了令人尴尬的回答。测试其能力的研究人员发现，该机器人给出的答案会传播中国的宣传，甚至重复虚假信息。

Some concerns are more existential in nature. A growing chorus of scholars have been sounding the alarm about the potentially catastrophic consequences of losing human control over A.I.

有些担忧则更关乎生死存亡。越来越多的学者警告，人类失去对人工智能的控制可能带来灾难性后果。

Chief among those voices has been Andrew Yao, a giant in A.I. at Tsinghua University and a recipient of the Turing Award, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for computing. His influence helped establish what China calls the Global AI Governance Initiative, which was introduced by Mr. Xi in 2023 and included a call to always keep A.I. under human control. Last year, the government also called for the enhancement of A.I. governance “on the basis of human decision-making and supervision.”

清华大学人工智能领域的巨擘、图灵奖（相当于计算机领域的诺贝尔奖）获得者姚期智的声音格外突出。他的影响力帮助中国建立了所谓的“全球人工智能治理倡议”，该倡议由习近平于2023年提出，其中包括呼吁始终将人工智能置于人类控制之下。去年，中国政府还呼吁“在人类决策和监督的基础上”加强人工智能治理。

Ultimately, A.I. in China may only advance as far as the government decides it can mitigate those risks, said Barath Harithas, an expert on A.I. policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

最终，中国的人工智能可能只能在政府认为可以降低这些风险的情况下才能向前发展，华盛顿智库”战略与国际研究中心”的人工智能政策专家巴拉特·哈里塔斯说。

“Overregulation and the need to adhere to ‘core socialist values’ could risk neutering A.I.’s potential,” Mr. Harithas said.

“过度监管和坚持‘社会主义核心价值观’的必要性可能会削弱人工智能的潜力，”哈里塔斯说。