China's 'Shikong' Organizes AI Risk by Actor, Not Harm Severity

Analysis by Zilan Qian and the Oxford China Policy Lab finds that China's concept of 'shikong' (loss of control) covers three distinct scenarios: an operator losing control of a system, the state losing control, and permanent human loss of control over AI. The organizing principle in Chinese discourse is who is presumed to exercise control and who loses it, rather than the severity of harm or the mechanism of failure. The analysis also finds that China lacks discourse about loss-of-control risks within internal lab deployments, an area the analysis identifies as one of the biggest dangers.