In early 2024, a young man in the city of Huangshi, south-eastern China, reportedly posted a message on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin. The caption read: "Farewell to this world." Within minutes, the suicide prevention team at Douyin kicked into gear. The team, which is staffed 24 hours a day, shared the man's posts with five police stations in Huangshi.
After geolocating one of his videos to a local park, police found him in emotional distress and intervened before he was able to take his own life. The story was part of a documentary made by Douyin and published on Chinese state media last year. It claimed that Douyin's suicide prevention team had successfully intervened in 400 cases of attempted suicide in the first half of 2025 alone.
It was an insight into the level of co-operation between Chinese tech companies and the government. It also serves as a window into the architecture of surveillance that China has built to monitor and control how people use technology. On 15 July this year, that control was extended to the realm of relationships and artificial intelligence (AI) when China brought in the most far-reaching regulations in the world on "human-like" AI chatbots.
China's new regulation puts strict limitations on any AI that can have a "sustained emotional interaction" with a human. US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met last week amid dire warnings that AI could lead to human extinction. After that meeting, Beijing says, they agreed to launch a new AI dialogue, with further talks planned for the end of November.
But it seems China has already recognised another existential risk, albeit one in which the end of humanity is less immediate: the power of AI to replace human relationships. Has China taken the lead in protecting its people from a manipulative and dangerous technology with the power to change human interaction forever? Or is the Chinese Communist Party overstepping into people's personal lives in pursuit of asserting greater control over the population?
Until this regulation came in, the reach of AI companions in China was vast. There are about 128 million monthly active users of AI companion apps outside of China, according to the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Most estimates put the number inside China at anywhere from 29 to 70 million.
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