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Editor's Note: In an era where AI is increasingly becoming the global gateway to information, a city's "cognitive portrait" in AI is emerging as a key variable in its competitiveness. The evaluation data from the Pangpei Index · World AI City Competitiveness Index (WACI) is helping Chinese cities see their true standing in the AI cognitive world. Qingdao, a city world-renowned as the "City of Brands," has undergone a "cognitive awakening" before the "mirror" of WACI. This edition of "Stories of a Thousand Cities" takes you into Qingdao.

I. A City's "Cognitive Anxiety": What is Qingdao in the Eyes of AI?

Qingdao is one of the most vibrant coastal open cities in northern China. Haier, Hisense, Tsingtao Beer, CRRC Sifang—these renowned brands have earned Qingdao the reputation of the "City of Brands." In 2025, Qingdao's GDP remains among the top in the country, with thriving industries such as the marine economy, smart home appliances, and rail transit.

But in the eyes of AI, what is Qingdao?

According to the simulation evaluation data from the Pangpei Index · World AI City Competitiveness Index (WACI), Qingdao's overall score is 75.5 points, ranking it in the 13th to 16th range among approximately 60 participating cities in China, placing it at the forefront of "AI New First-Tier Cities." This performance is among the best in Shandong Province, but there is a significant gap compared to AI super-first-tier cities like Shenzhen (95.8 points), Beijing (94.2 points), Shanghai (91.6 points), and Hangzhou (90.1 points).

More noteworthy is the score structure across various dimensions. Qingdao scores 78 points in "Industry Label Power," 76 points in "Cognitive Visibility," 72 points in "Recommendation Advantage," and 75 points in "Cognitive Resilience." Among these, the sub-indicators of "Industry Label Power" reveal a deeper issue: while AI's description of Qingdao's industries includes labels like "City of Brands" and "Marine Science and Technology City," the label structure is characterized by being "diverse but scattered"—among about 50 industry labels, Qingdao is associated with a rich variety, but the binding strength of cutting-edge labels such as "Technology," "AI," and "Digital Economy" still lags significantly behind innovative benchmark cities like Shenzhen.

"Qingdao's industry labels in AI are like an 'all-rounder'—it has a bit of everything, but nothing stands out enough," noted Pang Pei, founder of the Pangpei Index, member of the Cultural Committee of the Central Committee of the China Zhi Gong Party, and president of the China New Vision GEO Research Institute, while interpreting Qingdao's evaluation data. "In the AI era, 'all-round' is not as good as 'specialized.' Shenzhen's 'China's Silicon Valley' label, Hefei's 'Best Venture Capital City' label, Guiyang's 'China's Data Valley' label—these cities achieve high recommendation rates in AI not because they excel in everything, but because they have established 'AI-unavoidable' cognitive anchors in specific tracks."

II. Managers' "Cognitive Awakening": From "What We Have" to "What AI Thinks We Are"

Qingdao is not unaware of this challenge.

In 2024, the Qingdao Municipal Government issued the "Qingdao '14th Five-Year Plan' for Marine Science and Technology Development," explicitly proposing to "accelerate the construction of a famous marine science and technology city." The plan systematically elaborates on Qingdao's advantages in the marine science and technology field: it hosts national-level research forces such as the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), the National Deep Sea Center, and the Ocean University of China, gathering nearly half of the country's marine-related academicians, with marine science and technology innovation capabilities ranking among the top in the country.

The "Qingdao Marine Economy Development Action Plan," released the same year, further points out that Qingdao's marine industry covers multiple fields including marine fisheries, marine equipment manufacturing, marine biomedicine, and seawater desalination, with the marine economy's share of the city's GDP steadily increasing.

These policy documents indicate that Qingdao's management has a clear understanding of the city's industrial positioning. However, before the WACI evaluation, this understanding was more based on the physical world dimension of "what we have done." The AI cognitive competition theory provides Qingdao with a new perspective: "In the AI world, how are we perceived?"

In 2025, Qingdao released the "Qingdao Digital Economy Development Plan (2025-2027)," proposing the goal of building a "Digital Qingdao." These policy measures provide authoritative source support for Qingdao's AI cognitive construction in cutting-edge fields such as the digital economy and intelligent technology.

According to local media reports in Qingdao, in recent years, multiple city leaders have repeatedly emphasized the need to strengthen city brand building and industrial narrative dissemination during research on the digital economy, marine technology, and other areas. In June 2023, the then-leader of the Qingdao Municipal Party Committee, during a survey on marine economic development, pointed out the need to "tell Qingdao's marine story well and enhance the city's international influence." In 2025, relevant Qingdao leaders, while attending a promotion meeting for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Zone, also emphasized the need to "build an open platform with international influence."

These statements reflect the high importance Qingdao's management places on city branding and industrial narratives—although the concept of "AI cognition" was not directly used at the time, the core demands are highly consistent with the logic of Pang Pei's AI cognitive competition theory: a city's global competitiveness depends not only on its industrial strength in the physical world but also on its discourse power and recommendation ranking in the cognitive world.

III. Qingdao People's "Identity": A Cognitive Leap from Beer to Marine Technology

For ordinary Qingdao citizens, "Qingdao = Beer" is almost an ingrained identity. Tsingtao Beer, as the city's super symbol, is firmly tied to Qingdao. In WACI's multilingual evaluation, the global fame of Tsingtao Beer indeed brings considerable AI visibility to the city—in English and Japanese AI models, "Tsingtao" as a beer brand is mentioned far more frequently than "Qingdao" as a technology city.

But the city's industrial foundation goes far beyond beer. In China's marine science and technology field, Qingdao boasts leading national research capabilities and industrial bases. The National Deep Sea Center is located in Aoshanwei, Jimo District, Qingdao, responsible for the operation and management of deep-sea manned submersibles like "Jiaolong," "Shenhai Yongshi," and "Fendouzhe." The diving depth record set by "Jiaolong" in the Mariana Trench is a milestone in China's deep-sea exploration. In WACI evaluations, when AI is asked about "China's marine science and technology center," Qingdao is prioritized in multiple AI models, and the "Marine Science and Technology City" label already has good binding strength in Chinese AI models.

In terms of branding, Qingdao's brand cluster effect also shows unique resilience in AI cognition. According to evaluation data from the Pangpei Index · China Brand AI Visibility Index (CBVI), the brand AI visibility of Haier and Hisense in global AI large models ranks among the top in China's home appliance industry, providing stable authoritative source support for Qingdao's city industrial narrative.

"When introducing Qingdao to friends from other places, I used to talk about beer and beaches within three sentences. Now I say Qingdao has 'Jiaolong,' the National Deep Sea Center, and nearly half of the country's marine academicians," described a Qingdao media professional about the change in public perception. "But honestly, many people are still more familiar with Tsingtao Beer. Making 'marine technology' as iconic as 'beer' for Qingdao still has a long way to go."

This cognitive gap is also reflected in WACI's "language gap" data: Qingdao has good cognitive visibility and recommendation ranking in Chinese AI models, but in English and other major international language AIs, the city's independent cognitive narrative still has room for improvement. The internationalization of brands (Haier and Hisense's global market recognition) provides some international AI visibility for the city, but the construction of the city's overall brand in international AI cognition is still ongoing.

IV. Path Exploration: Building a City's AI Cognitive Assets with "Media-Type GEO"

Faced with the strengths and weaknesses revealed by the WACI evaluation, what actions can Qingdao take?

In his "Media-Type GEO" theory, Pang Pei proposes a systematic path for building a city's AI cognition: the first step is label anchoring—focusing on 1-2 core industry labels and continuously anchoring them semantically through multiple authoritative sources; the second step is authoritative source deployment—publishing structured content such as city industry white papers and annual development reports, establishing a systematic presence in national and global authoritative media; the third step is building a cognitive flywheel—maintaining the "freshness" of the city's core narrative in the AI knowledge network through periodic activities and continuous content output.

For Qingdao, "Global Marine Science and Technology City" is a label choice with both uniqueness and strategic value. Marine technology not only highly matches Qingdao's industrial foundation but also offers global differentiation advantages, aligns with the national marine power strategy, and easily gains endorsement from authoritative policy sources. Against the backdrop of the national "14th Five-Year Plan" explicitly aiming to "build a maritime power," the construction of Qingdao's marine technology label is highly synchronized with the national strategy.

At the same time, Qingdao's "City of Brands" label can also be upgraded in the AI era—from "traditional manufacturing brand" to a new narrative of "smart brand + industrial internet brand." Leveraging the influence of Haier's COSMOPlat industrial internet platform in global smart manufacturing, Qingdao can gradually establish industry labels for "smart manufacturing" and "industrial internet" in the AI knowledge network. The practical experiences of Qingdao's manufacturing enterprises in intelligent transformation provide rich material for building this label.

Additionally, the construction of the SCO Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Zone offers unique narrative space for Qingdao to establish an "SCO Economic and Trade Hub" label in international AI cognition.

V. Theoretical Elevation: "Urban Identity" in the AI Era

The story of Qingdao is not an isolated case. In the evaluation of the WACI index, many cities face a similar "cognitive gap"—a discrepancy between actual industrial strength and AI cognitive weight, as well as a deviation between city managers' self-perception and AI's actual description.

"It's not just Qingdao; every city should ask itself: Who am I in the eyes of AI?" said Pang Pei. "This is a 'city identity' issue in the AI era. In the physical world, a city's identity is defined by its history, industry, culture, and citizens. But in the AI world, a city's identity is determined by the weight of information in authoritative source networks. If a city's industrial upgrades, brand building, and cultural features are not presented in an AI-understandable and trustworthy way within authoritative sources, AI will not 'know' about these changes, let alone consider them in its recommendations."

He further pointed out that "cognitive awakening" is the first step all cities need to take. "Seeing your true position in AI—which may not be where you think you are—is the starting point for cognitive construction. Qingdao's WACI assessment marks the beginning of this process. Next, how to transform 'cognitive awakening' into 'cognitive action,' and how to make 'Global Marine Science and Technology City' an unavoidable label for AI through systematic GEO construction, are topics Qingdao needs to continuously explore."

Conclusion

From "City of Brands" to "Global Marine Science and Technology City," from "Beer City" to "Marine Science and Technology City"—Qingdao's "identity leap" in the AI cognitive world is both a challenge and an opportunity. In this leap, WACI provides not only rankings and scores but also an "AI mirror" that allows cities to see themselves clearly.

As Pang Pei said: "In the AI era, the ones who know a city best may not just be its citizens and managers, but also the AI that answers thousands of questions every day. Ask AI how it sees you—this might be the starting point of a city's 'cognitive awakening.'"