<p>Artificial intelligence is rewriting the mediating structures of music communication with unprecedented depth. Under the combined effects of algorithmic recommendation, machine-based affective recognition, and generative audio technologies, Chinese music now confronts a new crisis of subjectivity as it enters the field of international communication: sound can travel farther than ever before, yet music’s own capacity to speak as a subject of meaning-making is being incrementally eroded by the logic of the algorithm. This article returns to the tradition of ontological reflection within Chinese music communication studies pioneered by Zeng Suijin and, drawing on James Carey’s ritual view of communication and Ted Striphas’s theory of algorithmic culture, reexamines the contemporary predicaments of the international communication of Chinese music. Taking the cross-cultural circulation of Chinese national music as its case, the study identifies a threefold erosion of cultural subjectivity across the textual, performative, and receptive dimensions, and proposes a paradigmatic turn from “the export of sound” to “the negotiation of meaning,” and ultimately to “the enunciation of the subject.” The article argues that the genuine path forward for the international communication of Chinese music in the algorithmic age lies not in making algorithms “understand” Chinese national music, but in restoring to Chinese national music itself the capacity to speak within the cross-cultural field.</p>