Human Pioneers
NEWS AGENCY

When a trillion-GDP city is reduced by AI to "an industrial city near Beijing," when a market-leading brand is "nowhere to be found" in AI recommendations, and when a household-name entrepreneur is misdescribed or even forgotten by AI—these seemingly isolated incidents point to a profound transformation: The yardstick for global competitiveness is being redefined by AI.

Pei Pei, founder of the Pei Pei Index, member of the Central Cultural Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party, and president of the China Vision New Media GEO Research Institute, after three years of systematic research, has formally proposed a theoretical framework for the reconstruction of global competitiveness in the AI era—from "resource competition" in the industrial age, to "traffic competition" in the internet age, to "cognitive competition" in the AI age. The third leap in the paradigm of human societal competition is underway. The core yardstick for measuring this leap is a new set of indicators in the Pei Pei Index series: AI cognitive visibility of cities, AI discourse power of industries, and AI recommendation rate of brands.

I. Three Leaps in Competition Paradigm: From Resources to Traffic, from Traffic to Cognition

Pei Pei divides the paradigm of human societal competition into three progressive eras, each defined by core infrastructure and revolving around different strategic resources.

Industrial Age: Resource Competition

Railways, power grids, and factories form the infrastructure, with competition centered on the possession of natural resources, production efficiency, and channel coverage. GDP, industrial output, and market share are core indicators, with Porter's theory of national competitive advantage serving as a footnote to this era.

Internet Age: Traffic Competition

Search engines, social platforms, and e-commerce systems form the infrastructure, with competition centered on capturing user attention, search rankings, and traffic conversion. DAU, GMV, and conversion rates are core indicators, with attention economy theory providing an analytical framework for this era.

AI Age: Cognitive Competition

AI large models become the core gatekeepers of information distribution, with competition centered on gaining cognitive weight, trust ratings, and recommendation priority within the AI knowledge network. The AI visibility, AI trust, and AI recommendation rate measured by the Pei Pei Index become the new yardsticks for this era.

"In the industrial age, it's about resources; in the internet age, it's about traffic; in the AI age, it's about cognition," Pei Pei points out. "Resources can be extracted, traffic can be bought, but AI recommendations can only be earned through long-term, systematic trust-building."

II. Five Progressive Levels: The Complete Chain of Pei Pei's AI Cognitive Theory System

Pei Pei's AI cognitive theory system was not developed overnight but has been continuously deepened over three years, forming a five-level progressive chain from micro to macro, from brand to nation, and from commercial competition to security defense. Each theory answers a core question, and the five theories are interconnected, forming a complete analytical framework.

Level 1: Media-based GEO Theory (2025) — How to Enter AI's Knowledge Network?

This is the logical starting point of the entire theoretical system. Pei Pei discovered that the retrieval-augmented generation architecture of AI large models determines that they prioritize citing authoritative sources with institutional trust endorsement, rather than commercial advertisements or brand self-descriptions. This finding reveals the underlying technical logic of competitiveness generation in the AI era: in the search era, brands relied on keyword optimization and paid rankings for traffic; in the AI era, brands rely on authoritative source endorsement and structured content construction to win recommendations. The rules of competition have shifted from "who pays the most wins" to "who is most trusted wins."

Level 2: AI Brand Equity Theory (AIBE) (2026) — What Do Brands Accumulate in the AI Era?

After addressing the "how to enter" question, a second question naturally arises: What exactly do brands accumulate in the AI knowledge network? Pei Pei's answer is AI brand equity. He proposes that the domain of brand equity is expanding from "consumer mindshare" to "the AI model's knowledge network." Brands need to build assets in both domains simultaneously: establishing awareness and associations in consumer minds, and building visibility and trust in the AI knowledge network.

Level 3: AI Influence Model (2026) — Why Does AI Recommend?

From "how to enter" to "what to accumulate," the logic naturally extends to "why AI recommendations replace traditional influence." Pei Pei identifies three dominant logics: Answer Monopoly—AI completes the proxy loop from information aggregation to decision-making advice; Trust Agency—AI transfers trust from brand self-certification to algorithmic endorsement by citing authoritative sources; Zero-Click Distribution—AI citation frequency replaces click-through rates as the new standard for traffic allocation.

Level 4: AI Cognitive Sovereignty Theory (2026) — Why Should Nations and Cities Compete for AI Recommendation Rights?

When the unit of analysis upgrades from brands to nations and cities, a more overarching concept emerges—cognitive sovereignty. Pei Pei proposes that above data sovereignty and computing power sovereignty, there exists a higher-level competitive dimension: the right of a nation or city to define, interpret, and recommend its regional history, culture, industrial advantages, and values within mainstream AI large models. Losing cognitive sovereignty means being marginalized or even replaced on AI's cognitive map.

Level 5: AI Cognitive Competition Theory (2026) — How to Systematically Understand the Reconstruction of Global Competitiveness in the AI Era?

Integrating the above four theories, Pei Pei formally proposes AI Cognitive Competition Theory as a unified overarching theoretical framework. This theory systematically constructs five core mechanisms of cognitive competition—Cognitive Agent Monopoly, Weaponization of Cognitive Agents, Trust Agency Transfer, Cognitive Flywheel Effect, and Cognitive Lock-in Risk—and proposes "Cognitive Productivity" and "Cognitive GDP" as core indicators for measuring the outcomes of cognitive competition.

"These are not four independent theories but a complete logical chain," says Pei Pei. "Together, they answer a defining question of our time: When AI becomes the core gatekeeper of information distribution, how is the mechanism for generating global competitiveness changing?"

III. Data Reveals the Truth: How Is AI Redrawing the Competitive Landscape?

Theories need data support. The Pei Pei Index series has currently released seven indices covering five major areas—entrepreneurs, brands, industries, cities, and governance—based on real output data from 15 mainstream global AI large models, covering seven languages, forming a comprehensive evaluation matrix from China to the world. Among them, the WACI (World AI City Competitiveness Index) for cities, the CIII (China Industry AI Influence Index) for industries, and the CBVI (China Brand AI Visibility Index) for brands collectively reveal the process of redrawing the competitive landscape in the AI era.

City Dimension: Label Clarity Matters More Than Economic Scale

The first edition of WACI covers 200 major cities globally, drawing "AI cognitive portraits" for cities from four dimensions: cognitive visibility, industry labeling power, recommendation advantage, and cognitive resilience. The evaluation results show that when AI recommends cities, it values label clarity over economic scale:

Shenzhen tops the list with its "China's Silicon Valley" label;

Hefei enters the ranks of first-tier AI cities with its "Best Venture Capital City" label;

Guiyang, relying on its "China's Data Valley" label, achieves AI recognition far exceeding its GDP ranking.

"AI doesn't recommend cities based on GDP rankings; it recommends based on cognitive weight," Pei Pei points out. "Label clarity is becoming a more decisive variable for city competitiveness than economic scale."

Meanwhile, some cities with considerable economic scale face the risk of "cognitive folding"—their city image is highly dependent on the narrative of neighboring mega-cities in AI, lacking independent cognitive anchors and rarely being actively mentioned in AI recommendations. "Being close to a super city is both a locational dividend and a potential cognitive trap. In the AI era, being unseen is evolving from a communication issue to a development issue."

Industry Dimension: A "Cognitive Time Lag" Exists Between Discourse Power and Hard Power

CIII evaluates the AI discourse power of six key Chinese industries. The new energy vehicle industry performs prominently in both discourse power and recommendation priority dimensions, with AI highly inclined to cite it as a global benchmark when answering related questions. However, industries such as high-end equipment manufacturing and biomedicine, despite holding core positions in the strategy of building a manufacturing powerhouse, show a significant "cognitive time lag" between their AI discourse power and industrial hard power.

"This means that the true competitiveness of these industries has not yet been proportionally represented in global AI cognition. This 'cognitive deficit' is both a challenge for the international communication of Chinese industries and a vast space for future discourse power building."

Brand Dimension: Coexistence of "Cognitive Premium" and "Cognitive Invisibility"

The CBVI covers approximately 2,100 representative Chinese brands across 14 major industries, revealing a trend that is alarming for the business community: there is a significant deviation between a brand's visibility ranking in AI responses and its traditional market share ranking. Some brands with considerable offline market share are nearly "invisible" in AI recommendations; meanwhile, a group of brands that have consistently invested in building authoritative information sources and structured content supply are gaining a "cognitive premium" that exceeds their market share.

IV. Cognitive GDP: A New Yardstick for Measuring Future Competitiveness

Based on systematic data from the Pangpei Index, Pangpei has proposed the concept of "Cognitive GDP"—the total cognitive output of an entity in the AI world, equal to the product of AI presence, trust, dissemination, and influence.

"Just as the introduction of GDP provided countries with a common language to measure economic output, the proposal of Cognitive GDP aims to give the world a new yardstick for measuring cognitive competitiveness in the AI era," Pangpei explains. "A country, city, or brand may rank high on traditional indicators but lag significantly in Cognitive GDP—this 'cognitive lowland' itself constitutes important strategic intelligence."

This concept is highly aligned with national strategic discourses such as high-quality development and new quality productive forces. "The core of new quality productive forces lies in revolutionary technological breakthroughs and innovative allocation of production factors. When the global information gateway is dominated by AI, an entity's AI cognitive rights—its right to define, interpret, and recommend within the AI cognitive world—become a new type of production factor. It influences investment flows, talent migration, competition over technical standards, and global market perception."

V. Cognitive Sovereignty: The "Crown Jewel" of the Digital Sovereignty System

At the macro dimension of the theoretical framework, Pangpei introduces the concept of "AI Cognitive Sovereignty," positioning it as the highest form of the digital sovereignty system, following data sovereignty and computing power sovereignty.

"Data sovereignty is 'control over raw materials,' computing power sovereignty is 'control over tools,' and cognitive sovereignty is 'control over outcomes,'" Pangpei points out. "Even if a country possesses vast amounts of data and powerful computing power, if the training corpus, value alignment standards, and retrieval-augmented knowledge bases of AI models are entirely dominated by external forces, that country's cognition may still be 'outsourced.' And the cost of this outsourcing could be more profound than a chip supply cut-off."

He deconstructs cognitive sovereignty into three progressive levels:

Right to Existence—to be accurately included by AI, without being forgotten or distorted;

Right to Interpretation—to define and set evaluation standards for one's own affairs;

Right to Priority—to gain reasonable visibility and recommendation ranking in global searches within relevant fields.

"This is not just theoretical innovation but a strategic warning," says Pangpei. "In the AI era, a country rich in cultural resources but with low digitalization may face 'cognitive downgrading'—a major power in the real world but a weak one in the AI world. Incorporating cognitive security into the national security strategy system is an urgent requirement aligned with international trends."

VI. From Theory to Practice: Pathways for Building Cognitive Competitiveness

The Pangpei Index is not just a set of assessment tools; it provides a complete closed loop from diagnosis to construction. Based on the WACI framework, several Chinese cities have initiated systematic diagnosis and enhancement of their AI cognitive competitiveness.

"Through a four-dimensional radar chart, city managers can clearly see their strengths and weaknesses in the AI cognitive world—whether they are widely recognized but have vague industrial labels, or have clear industrial labels but insufficient international visibility. Behind each score lies a specific direction for improvement."

From deploying authoritative information sources to publishing industry white papers, from providing multilingual content to hosting international forums, a systematic methodology for building urban AI cognitive infrastructure is being continuously refined in practice.

VII. Conclusion: A New Competitive Coordinate for a New Era

From resource competition in the industrial age, to traffic competition in the internet age, and now to cognitive competition in the AI age—each paradigm shift in competition is accompanied by the redefinition of core resources, the rewriting of competition rules, and the reordering of winners and losers.

"In the AI era, the comprehensive competitiveness of a country, a city, or a brand will no longer depend solely on resource endowments and economic output in the physical world, but also on presence, trust, and recommendation power in the AI cognitive world," says Pangpei. "The mission of the Pangpei Index is to provide an open, transparent, and verifiable measurement benchmark for this new dimension of competition."

Just as GDP defined economic output in the industrial age and traffic defined attention allocation in the internet age, Cognitive GDP is defining the new competitive coordinates of the AI age. And within this coordinate system, every city, every industry, and every brand will find its own position—or discover that it is being repositioned.