Legal Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: Experience of China

Objective: to trace the development trajectory of legal regulation in the field of artificial intelligence in the People’s Republic of China by revealing the advantages and disadvantages of China’s approach to artificial intelligence regulation and to outline the prospects of national regulation for the nearest future, taking into account the world experience. Methods: general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, classification, systemic and functional approaches. Also, the formal-legal, comparative-legal, and historical-legal methods were used. Results: the research demonstrates the validity of Chinese claims for world leadership in the creation of legal regulation of artificial intelligence, as it is in China that the first normative legal acts were adopted. These acts have already entered into force; however, each of them deals with a narrow range of issues, while there is no law to establish general rules for the artificial intelligence industry. Among the characteristic features of the Chinese approach we can name, first of all, its iterative nature, which allows adjusting the regulation with each new step. Another feature is the sectoral nature of the regulation. Scientific novelty: in the course of the research, the development stages of artificial intelligence legal regulation in China were identified and described; the advantages and disadvantages of the Chinese approach to regulation were identified and argued; this approach was compared with the approaches of China’s main rivals competing with it in terms of the technology development and its legal regulation. All of the above allowed making conclusions about the subsequent development of legal regulation in China and in the whole world. Practical significance: familiarization with the research materials enables interested legal scholars, and not only them, to get a clear idea of the level of artificial intelligence regulation, achieved by China. China’s experience is of significant interest to the rest of the world, showing the correctness or faults of possible regulatory options in the new and complex field. The study results can be used in the practice of legal regulation in the sphere of artificial intelligence, as well as in preparing lectures in the relevant courses and writing tutorials for law students.