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Pang Pei's AI Cognitive Theory System Published and Deeply Interpreted on the "Xuexi Qiangguo" Platform

When a city with a GDP exceeding one trillion yuan is simplified in an AI large model's answer as "an industrial city near Beijing," or when a market-leading brand is nowhere to be found in an AI recommendation list—these seemingly scattered phenomena point to the same underlying proposition: in an era where AI is increasingly becoming the core gateway to information, the metrics of competitiveness are being quietly rewritten.

Recently, the "Xuexi Qiangguo" platform published two theoretical articles by Pang Pei, founder of the Pang Pei Index, member of the Cultural Committee of the Central Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party, and president of the China Central News GEO Research Institute: "An Overview of AI Cognitive Sovereignty Theory" and "AI Cognitive Competition Theory: Reconstructing Global Competitiveness in the Generative AI Era." Subsequently, the platform published an in-depth interpretation article titled "From Resource Competition to Cognitive Competition: Pang Pei Proposes a New Framework for Reconstructing Global Competitiveness in the AI Era," systematically elucidating the internal logic of this theoretical system.

When an original theoretical system by a Chinese scholar is consecutively included and prominently interpreted by the "Xuexi Qiangguo" platform, which is under the supervision of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, it is not only an affirmation of individual academic contributions but also signifies that the era-defining proposition revealed by this theory—AI is reshaping the global competitiveness landscape—has entered the core agenda of national strategic communication.

I. A Progressive Theoretical Chain

Pang Pei's AI cognitive theory system was not developed overnight but evolved over three years of continuous deepening, forming a five-stage progressive chain from the micro to the macro level.

The first stage addresses "how to enter AI's knowledge network." Pang Pei discovered that the retrieval-augmented generation architecture of AI large models prioritizes 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 gain recommendations through authoritative source endorsement and structured content development.

The second stage answers "what brands accumulate in the AI era." Pang Pei proposes that the domain of brand assets is expanding from "consumer mindset" to "AI model knowledge networks." Brands need to build assets in both domains simultaneously.

The third stage addresses "why AI recommends." Pang 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.

The fourth stage elevates the analysis unit from brands to nations and cities. Pang Pei argues that above data sovereignty and computing power sovereignty, there exists a higher-level competitive dimension—cognitive sovereignty. A nation or city holds the right to define, interpret, and recommend its historical culture, industrial advantages, and values within mainstream AI large models.

The fifth stage integrates the above four theories, formally proposing AI Cognitive Competition Theory as a unified framework. It systematically constructs five core mechanisms of cognitive competition and introduces "cognitive productivity" and "cognitive GDP" as key metrics to measure the outcomes of cognitive competition.

II. The Cognitive Landscape Revealed by Data

The value of theory lies in explaining reality. The Pang Pei Index series has currently released seven indices covering five major fields: entrepreneurs, brands, industries, cities, and governance, based on real output data from global mainstream AI large models.

At the city level, the initial WACI assessment covering approximately 200 major cities worldwide shows that AI prioritizes not economic scale but the clarity of industrial labels when recommending cities. Shenzhen tops the list with the "China's Silicon Valley" label, Hefei enters the AI first-tier city ranks with the "top venture capital city" label, and Guiyang gains AI recognition far exceeding its GDP ranking due to the "China's Data Valley" label. Meanwhile, some cities with considerable economic scale face a "cognitive folding" risk—their city image in AI is highly dependent on the narratives of surrounding megacities, lacking independent cognitive anchors.

At the industry level, the CIII evaluates the AI discourse power of six major Chinese industries. The new energy vehicle industry excels in both discourse power and recommendation priority, with AI highly inclined to cite it as a global benchmark case when answering related questions. However, industries such as high-end equipment manufacturing and biomedicine, despite their core positions in the manufacturing power strategy, still exhibit a significant "cognitive lag" between their AI discourse power and industrial hard power.

At the brand level, the CBVI covers approximately 2,100 representative Chinese brands across 14 major industries, revealing a trend that alarms the business community: the visibility ranking of brands in AI answers shows a significant deviation from their traditional market share rankings.

III. Alignment with the Era's Proposition

In its interpretation of Pang Pei's theory, the "Xuexi Qiangguo" platform particularly emphasizes the resonance between the theory and current national strategies.

From the perspective of high-quality development, WACI data reveals that label clarity is replacing economic scale as the primary basis for AI recommendations, which aligns closely with the concept of "pursuing specialized and differentiated development paths" emphasized in high-quality development. In terms of new quality productive forces, when an entity's AI cognitive power—its right to define, interpret, and recommend in the AI cognitive world—becomes a new type of production factor, it expands the connotation of new quality productive forces from an AI dimension. Regarding autonomy and controllability, the concepts of "cognitive colonization" and "cultural entropy increase" proposed by Pang Pei in AI Cognitive Sovereignty Theory provide new analytical tools for understanding cultural security and ideological security in the AI era.

From academic journals to industry practice and systematic promotion on national platforms, the dissemination path of Pang Pei's AI cognitive theory system reflects a scholar's ongoing response to the era-defining proposition of competitiveness transformation in the AI age. The "Xuexi Qiangguo" platform has launched three columns under its "Thousand Cities" series—Thousand Cities Index, Thousand Cities Stories, and Thousand Cities Data—to continuously disseminate this theoretical system through theoretical interpretation, case narratives, and data reports, providing cognitive tools and strategic references for Party members and cadres, city managers, and industry practitioners in the AI era.