Why China Must Reclaim Protocol Rule‑Making in the LLM Era

MCP Global Hype and China’s Dependency

At the end of 2024, US AI unicorn Anthropic released the Model Context Protocol (MCP), quickly becoming a universal language for AI ecosystems. It functions like a "USB‑C" for large models, allowing easy connection to external tools and data sources and dramatically lowering development barriers. Chinese tech giants announced MCP compatibility and even opened MCP service stores, enabling developers to build agents in five minutes. On the surface this appears as an open‑technology victory, but the article warns that China’s AI ecosystem is developing a hidden "protocol dependency".

Why China Needs Its Own MCP: Three Unignorable Realities

1. Technological Sovereignty: Protocols Equal Power – The prosperity of MCP is driven by Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and others who control the ecosystem’s discourse. Protocol standard setters hold the upstream valves of the technology stack. For example, Google’s recent A2A (Agent‑to‑Agent) protocol complements MCP and further consolidates its dominance in multi‑agent collaboration. Long‑term reliance on external protocols could leave China’s core toolchains, data interfaces, and security frameworks subject to external control and vulnerable to “protocol supply cuts” amid geopolitical shifts.

2. Autonomous and Controllable Foundations – Chinese large‑model technology has achieved partial leadership, exemplified by DeepSeek’s visible successes. Yet the lack of native protocol standards forces these advances to sit on foundations built by others. As National People’s Congress representative Liu Qingfeng stated, “Only on an autonomous and controllable platform can China’s AI future be truly realized.”

3. Scenario Fit and Innovation Potential – Although MCP is generic, it may not satisfy China’s unique industry requirements such as higher data‑security compliance in government, healthcare, and finance, which demand finer‑grained permission controls and localized protocol designs. Moreover, China’s extensive experience with agent applications in e‑commerce and local services can be leveraged to craft more efficient protocol standards that could later be exported globally.

Breakthrough Path: From Protocol User to Protocol Designer

1. Top‑Level Design: Dual‑Wheel Drive of Policy and Ecosystem – Establish a national AI protocol special‑fund to support joint efforts by enterprises and universities, prioritizing open‑source implementations of autonomous protocols. Continue to promote open‑source community building, borrowing MCP’s openness while ensuring core governance remains Chinese‑led, enabling scale effects that can be reversed to the global stage.

2. Technical Fusion: Beyond MCP, Define a “Chinese Solution” – Integrate MCP with A2A capabilities to create a unified framework that supports tool connection plus multi‑agent collaboration, featuring multimodal interaction, dynamic task allocation, and other distinctive functions. Combine this with domestic compute back‑ends and design protocol‑compute co‑optimization mechanisms to boost efficiency and security.

3. Industry Collaboration: From Point Breakthrough to Ecosystem Prosperity – Encourage cloud providers to build tool‑chain stores driven by indigenous protocols, offering smooth migration from existing MCP services while gradually replacing them with domestic protocols. Form cross‑industry protocol alliances that bring together leading firms from finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and other verticals to jointly define scenario‑specific protocol extensions.

Conclusion: The Standard War Leaves No Retreat

Historically, China suffered heavy costs by following standards in operating systems and chip architectures. The competition over LLM protocol standards now opens a new front. Continued reliance on MCP would relegate China to a “tenant” of the AI ecosystem rather than a “landlord” of its rules. The article calls for an “protocol awakening” – using autonomous innovation as a spear and ecosystem collaboration as a shield – to write a new chapter of Chinese standards in the AI era.