China criticized warnings from leading US technology executives to put the brakes on artificial intelligence development and claims that Chinese progress posed a dire security threat to the world.
“Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance and serve the interests of no one,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a regular briefing in Beijing on Monday.
“The development of artificial intelligence bears on the common well-being of all humanity,” he added, in response to a question on calls to slow frontier models and claims a Chinese advantage in AI could “pose grave danger” to the world.
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Over the weekend, Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei made a public call for companies to slow the pace at which they improve AI capabilities, which was backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk. His 3,800-word essay pushed for democracies to maintain “as large as possible” lead in AI, tighter controls on advanced chip sales to China and a crackdown on using American models’ output to train competing systems, a practice known as distillation.
The dispute over frontier technology is intensifying days before officials from the US and China are set to hold AI discussions ahead of Donald Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping on Sept. 24. The spat suggests even shared concerns over cyberattacks, misinformation and the potential loss of control over advanced systems may not be enough to produce an agreement between the world’s biggest economies.
China worries the US could invoke safety or national security to justify broader restrictions, said Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy in Beijing.
“The boundary between AI safety and AI competition is becoming increasingly blurred,” added Sun, who has discussed AI with US counterparts. “If every safety question becomes interpreted through the lens of strategic competition, meaningful dialogue will be difficult.”
In the summit lead up, Communist Party officials have also aired their own concerns over the rapid development of AI. Over the weekend, China’s top spy Chen Yixin published one of his nation’s most detailed accounts of Beijing’s own fears over AI, with a focus on regime security. In the article, he stated misuse by adversaries could threaten China’s political and ideological security as well as critical infrastructure.
The Foreign Ministry’s response suggests Beijing, and the country’s AI industry, will continue to chart its own course. Unlike some of their American counterparts, China’s top AI executives have largely refrained from calling for brakes on AI development as a safeguard, while the government has promoted the technology as a driver of economic growth and national power.
Xi and his lieutenants have proclaimed Chinese AI at the forefront of the country’s economy, celebrating entrepreneurs including DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng and advances by companies such as Huawei Technologies Co. and Moonshot AI.
“When we try to accelerate u tell me to slow down? omg...,” Justin Lin, one of the key former architects of Alibaba’s Qwen model, posted on X. “U can do whatev u want. stop pretending u need any permissions.”
The breakneck pace of Chinese AI development shows up in near-weekly model releases and upgrades to — perhaps most visibly — the velocity of capital-raising. In private, AI entrepreneurs and engineers grouse more about the need to keep up and ideally overtake their rivals in model iteration, as well reaching the ultimate goal of artificial general intelligence or AGI, rather than dwell on the risks of AI going rogue. That over-arching drive stems from the fact that Chinese AI still lags the best from the West, despite a narrowing gap.
“Beijing views AI as a once‑in‑a‑lifetime opportunity to reshape the technological balance with Washington, and it is unlikely to slow down voluntarily,” said George Chen, a partner at The Asia Group. “If you are No. 2, you do not stop at No. 2.”
In Amodei’s account, the risk goes beyond economic competition. He echoed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s earlier statement that a Chinese lead in AI would pose a threat to the US and the world. China could use superior AI to gain a military advantage over democracies, including through autonomous or AI-enabled drones, he wrote.
Amodei also advocated for eventual cooperation with China on global pacing, but said any agreement would require “ironclad verifiability.”
The warnings reveal both common ground and a widening divide. US technology leaders and Chinese officials agree that increasingly powerful models require oversight. But they differ sharply over how those dangers should be defined and who should set the rules.
In his article, Chen called for greater research on advanced chips and a faster buildout of AI infrastructure, even as he urged tighter supervision. Neither his article, which was likely prepared before the latest safety calls, nor the Global Times commentary suggested China intends to moderate the pace of its own development.
US export controls remain a major constraint. Huawei and other Chinese companies are developing more powerful hardware, but restrictions on advanced chips complicate efforts by DeepSeek, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and other developers to assemble the large computing clusters needed to train and operate frontier models efficiently.
That makes questions of restraint especially contentious. Chinese officials may see calls to slow development as locking in an existing US advantage, while Washington is unlikely to accept limits without credible ways to verify China’s compliance.
“If the US is taking the initiative to seek cooperation with China on this matter, shouldn’t the US also show some willingness to accommodate China’s long-standing concerns regarding AI?” said Jiang Tianjiao, a research fellow at the Center for Global AI Innovative Governance and an associate professor at Fudan University.
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