Anna Sytnik
One of the most important areas of bilateral cooperation between Russia and China is the strategic project for the development of digital technology and artificial intelligence in Eurasia.
Technology has long ceased to be just an economic tool, and has emerged as the central factor in global development and international stability. This has led to the emergence of a new field — geotechnology. It is already clear that in the future, competition will not occur between blocs of countries, but between technological ecosystems. Will Eurasia (not including the EU) become a single digital ecosystem? The sanctions policy of the “Collective West” is already leading to geoeconomic fragmentation, dividing the Eurasian space. One of the answers to this challenge could be the conjugation of the Digital Silk Road” with the digital projects of the EAEU in order to increase the technological sustainability of Eurasia.
This requires a clear coordination of actions from our countries. We already have a Joint Declaration on Cooperation in the Field of AI — the first step towards institutionalising the partnership at the state level. Within this framework, an ad hoc group was created to exchange experience, regulate and apply AI. The Kazan Declaration of the sixteenth BRICS Summit 2024 was adopted, which states that it is important to create international rules for data management and exchange, ensuring equal opportunities for all countries, especially developing ones, so that they can derive real benefits.
Russia and China have a similar approach to AI policy at the state level. We are forming a model of a decentralised initiative within the framework of a central strategy. This is an alternative to the Western model of AI development. In this model, the state plays a significant role, coordinating private business through various mechanisms and stimulating its development. This model is the future; many people understand this, even in the West. AI has reached such a level of development that it requires colossal energy resources. Only the state has them.
The priorities of Russia and China in the field of digital sovereignty largely coincide, including protecting the national Internet, investing in data centres, and developing their own social platforms and technologies. In the Eurasian space, both Russian and Chinese alternative social platforms to the West are successful. Russian Vkontakte is especially popular in Central Asia, and the Chinese platform WeChat is a serious competitor to American social networks in Eurasia as a whole.
We are developing alternative payment systems together. Since 2018, a payment system for BRICS countries for settlements in national currencies, BRICS Pay, has been under development. The central element of the system is the decentralised interstate payment platform DCMS, developed at St. Petersburg State University. This is just one of the solutions that can become an element of a more multipolar financial architecture and strengthen the economic independence of the global majority.
This year, the AI race has significantly accelerated, so I would like to address it specifically. Here I see 3 key points of contact:
A large array of diverse data is needed for the successful training of AI systems. Russia and China could join efforts in collecting and labelling data, taking into account the specifics of languages and cultures. The exchange of digital datasets in Russian and Chinese will improve translations, voice assistants, and search adapted to the Eurasian space. Joint data annotation standards and data exchange agreements will accelerate progress in creating competitive AI models that both sides can use.
The second area is a Strategic Partnership in AI, which requires investment in human capital. It is necessary to expand the exchange of students, postgraduates, and researchers between the two countries. The creation of joint master's programs in artificial intelligence (double degrees) and the opening of joint research laboratories at universities in Russia and China will help train a new generation of specialists. Such measures are already being taken - from branches of Russian universities in China to corporate internship programmes. Bringing together our educational resources will allow us to form a personnel reserve familiar with the advanced technologies of both countries and ensure the long-term sustainability of joint technology projects.
Third. We must jointly prepare a response to the next steps the Western countries take. Innovation: their filters will be laid not at the stage where models are fine-tuned, but at the stage where datasets are selected for training; the will remove the Russian and Chinese pictures of the world. This is especially dangerous on the path to universal artificial intelligence. This is the future of information warfare.
The world is dividing, but we can prevent the division of Eurasia.
Where else can we actively cooperate for the benefit of Eurasia and our countries? First of all, this concerns digital sovereignty, which is impossible without our own orbital satellite grouping. Today, we are witnessing the emergence of a new type of technological sanctions. They are no longer imposed by states, but by the IT giants themselves due to disagreement with the policies of states. An example is the shutdown of Starlink in South Africa at the behest of Elon Musk, due to the so-called "apartheid against whites." Starlink is currently the largest satellite system in orbit.
Its advantage is that it can provide communications almost anywhere on the planet, including remote and hard-to-reach regions. Starlink is currently actively promoting itself in Eurasia. For example, it recently started working in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Both Russia and China understand the importance of such technology as a strategically important element of infrastructure capable of ensuring digital sovereignty and communication stability. Our states are launching their own projects similar to Starlink. In Russia, this is being done by the 1440 Bureau. China has begun launching the Qianfan (Thousand Sails) cluster. It is necessary to accelerate the development of this technology, perhaps with the aim of sharing experiences to prevent dependence on American communications in Eurasia.
The development of digital infrastructure is impossible today without the development of the nuclear industry.This is an area where Russia and China are world leaders. The race for cheap, plentiful energy is intensifying, because AI requires a lot; nuclear energy can provide it. One nuclear power plant with a capacity of 1 GW can provide electricity to about 800 thousand households. This is how much energy is required for the development of AI. All key players understand this. There are two points to pay attention to here. The first promising direction is the development and construction of small modular reactors, which are compact, highly safe, and flexible in placement. However, as of early 2025, small modular reactors are only in operation in Russia and China. The rest of the countries are still at the development or prototype stage. This gives our countries a significant advantage in terms of technology exports to Eurasian countries interested in developing their own AI infrastructure. The second is investment in nuclear fusion technologies to create thermonuclear reactors. They will be able to power giant data centres in the future. At the international level, development is being carried out within the framework of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. Russia, China, and the United States are conducting experiments independently.
What unique things can Russia share? Over the past few years, we have gained unique experience in developing high-tech industries under unprecedented sanctions pressure from the “Collective West”. The sanctions presented a tactical difficulty for us, but became a strategic advantage. Import substitution is not only about digital sovereignty, but also about building trust in our range of products. Russia lags behind China in terms of investment in AI and the speed of its development. But we have strengths that make us a significant player in the field of AI in the world as a whole. Russia has set an ambitious goal: the market for AI should reach 1 trillion rubles this year, and by 2030, it could play the same role as oil in the 2000s. This is a rather bold bet, but it is supported by specific steps: the federal Artificial Intelligence project is being reformatted, a third wave of competitive selection of research centres is being launched, and businesses are increasingly adapting technologies for real tasks. I will add to this that Vladimir Putin has insisted that the implementation time for new AI materials in Russia should be reduced to 2-3 years.
Russia is not just developing its own AI solutions, but is also actively adapting international models (for example, DeepSeek), and achieving comparable results. This shows that the strategy of a combined approach - the use of open technologies and the development of its own (from scratch, and in Russian:YandexGPT, Gigachat, solutions by VK, Rostec, Rosatom) - can be no less effective than a full development cycle from scratch. There are strategic advantages, such as optimisation of algorithms, compensating for the lack of computing power. Since access to Western chips is limited, Russian developers have been forced to look for more effective methods of training models, which can serve a competitive advantage and even a sought-after product on the international market.
In addition, Russia is strong in mathematics, physics, and computer science, which provides a powerful base for theoretical research and the creation of new AI algorithms. Mathematicians and programmers from Russian universities (MIPT, HSE, MGU, ITMO) take leading positions every year in international Olympiads in programming and mathematics. We are moving towards a reality where AI agents (smart assistants that independently perform assigned tasks) will replace many things, including the search engines we are used to.Just like now, in the future we are unlikely to see a large variety of them. The only question is who will become the new Google, and who will sink into oblivion like Yahoo. In this regard, I would like to congratulate our Chinese colleagues on the successful release of the AI agent Manus, which has surpassed a similar solution based on ChatGPT in benchmarks. This is already being called DeepSeek moment No. 2. However, we need to go further. Eurasia needs its own digital infrastructure and a single space of trust, independent of external players.
Colleagues, we live in an amazing time when every new day brings us discoveries that completely change the balance of power on the digital chessboard. Today, not everything can be solved through financial injections and the availability of resources - mathematicians and programmers are able to find non-standard solutions and make a dark horse in the AI race spring ahead almost instantly. I may sound optimistic, but I think it is our countries that will have to take responsibility for the fate of Eurasia and prevent the dominance of the West in the field of high technology, prevent a new round of digital colonialism and, perhaps, make a decisive contribution to building a fair society for the future. It is towards achieving this goal that we must direct the efforts of all of our humanitarian and technical experts.
Anna Sytnik - Associate Professor of the St. Petersburg State University, Managing Director of the INPO “Kolaboratorija”.
Valdai Discussion Club
