Xueqi Cheng
What information retrieval research from inside the Chinese IR tradition has been arguing — and how its angle on generative retrieval differs from the Western canon.
Cheng has been one of the central figures in Chinese IR for over two decades, with the kind of multi-decade publication arc that crosses social-network analysis, web data, and retrieval, and which has lately converged on the generative-retrieval line his group at ICT-CAS publishes. The work differs in emphasis from the equivalent Western literature: more weight on graph and network structure as a retrieval signal, more attention to scaling under the specific data and user-behavior conditions of the Chinese-language web. For ai100 — which audits AI engines that operate in language environments shaped by very different web ecosystems — reading Cheng's line is one of the most useful correctives against treating "IR research" as English-web research wearing a translation hat.