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Phoebe Zhang

Local governments across China have rushed to ride the OpenClaw AI boom in hopes of spurring economic growth, only for Beijing to step in swiftly to rein in the frenzy.
Authorities in Beijing have issued a series of safety warnings that analysts say underscore the divide in priorities between local and central authorities.
The rush to adopt the artificial intelligence (AI) software has seen major internet companies offer low-cost or easily accessible versions, while local governments have rolled out subsidies to promote its use and develop software built around the technology.
High-profile examples include a district in Wuxi, in eastern Jiangsu province, which introduced a 12-point plan covering foundational support, talent recruitment and security compliance, offering individual grants of up to 5 million yuan (US$728,000).
But central authorities soon stepped in with security warnings about the viral open-source AI agent.
Cybersecurity agency the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Centre of China on Thursday issued its second warning this week, asserting that OpenClaw was vulnerable to threats. The centre is directly under the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet watchdog.
A cybersecurity information centre under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology earlier issued a similar warning, with guidelines on best practices and prohibitions for adopting and using OpenClaw. It recommended that users minimised internet exposure and granted only the minimum necessary permissions.


Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, described the discrepancy between local and central directives as quite normal.
“The local government focuses more on finding new growth points for the economy, but the central government looks at the big picture, whether there will be data breaches and such,” he said.
Xie Maosong, a senior researcher at Tsinghua University’s National Institute of Strategic Studies, also noted that the pattern was familiar. Every time new industries came up, the central government needed to issue general guidelines when it spotted problems, he said.
“It’s normal practice for the central government to let localities dive into it first, but when there’s a frenzy or when problems rise, they come in to issue guidance.”


President Xi Jinping himself has emphasised this principle, saying that local cadres should adopt a “long-term, national perspective” when evaluating governance performance, subordinating personal ambitions to directives from above.
State news agency Xinhua highlighted the point in an article last month. It described a new campaign – set to run until July – that requires officials to rectify deviations from the “correct” line in their own duties and those of their subordinates.
It also cited a January speech by Xi, when he noted that this year marked not just the start of China’s 15th five-year plan but also the beginning of power transitions up to the provincial level.
“At such a time, it’s particularly relevant to emphasise the correct view of appraisal and governance performance,” he was quoted as saying.
Wu said: “What tests the central government right now is how to properly incentivise local governments to be more responsible.”
In the past, he said, local governments had always found ways to circumvent central demands and pursue their own interests.
Wu cited his 2024 case study on local defiance when, despite central support for genetically modified organisms, Heilongjiang province banned them in 2016, leveraging public distrust and central ambiguity, and framing the ban as an effort to advance Xi’s concept of green development to minimise backlash.
However, he noted that the central government had addressed local demands – for instance, by diversifying incentives beyond GDP growth. This shift was already under way, Wu said, with Premier Li Qiang last week announcing a 4.5 to 5 per cent growth target – the lowest since 1991.
“That’s a sign that the central government has seen the difficulties of the local governments,” Wu said, referencing challenges including local debt burdens and falling land revenue.
“It’s better than having an accurate number, and in that case local governments would fake their data [if the target is not met].”


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What China’s OpenClaw divide reveals about local and central government priorities

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Engineers (front) install OpenClaw on people’s laptops at Baidu’s headquarters in Beijing on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

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Urgent security warnings from Beijing as local authorities rush to ride the boom expose familiar priority gaps, observers say


Urgent security warnings from Beijing as local authorities rush to ride the boom expose familiar priority gaps, observers say.


What China’s OpenClaw divide reveals about local and central government priorities

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Urgent security warnings from Beijing as local authorities rush to ride the boom expose familiar priority gaps, observers say

Urgent security warnings from Beijing as local authorities rush to ride the boom expose familiar priority gaps, observers say