China's Foreign Ministry criticizes warnings about AI risks, saying “fearmongering, confrontation, and vicious competition ... serve the interests of no one”
China criticized calls from leading US technology executives to put the brakes on artificial intelligence development …
Context & Ripple Effects
China’s official AI posture has paired industrial discipline with security concerns: Beijing said in 2025 it would curb excess competition in its AI sector, while the Ministry of State Security has separately identified political, social, cyber, and military risks from AI. The Foreign Ministry’s response draws a line between domestic risk management and externally backed demands to slow development.
The dispute extends a diplomatic fault line visible in the 2024 US-China AI talks in Geneva, where Washington raised concerns about AI misuse and Beijing objected to US restrictions and pressure. Public reaction has cast the disagreement as a test of whether AI safety discussions can be separated from strategic rivalry.
First-order effects
- US technology executives calling for a brake on AI development receive a formal Chinese rejection, placing their safety argument directly into a US-China competition frame.
- China’s government messaging distinguishes its own security-focused AI oversight from proposals that could constrain its development pace.
Second-order effects
- US-China AI discussions face a narrower path: safety concerns that overlap with cyber or military use can be treated by Beijing as part of the same dispute over technological pressure.
- Chinese AI firms operate under a policy environment that combines pressure against wasteful domestic rivalry with state-defined security controls, rather than an externally negotiated slowdown.
Third-order effects
- If this framing persists, frontier-AI governance will be shaped less by a shared definition of safety than by rival states’ authority to set development limits and model-access rules.
- The split points toward state-mediated AI policy in which security agencies and foreign-policy institutions influence the conditions under which commercial labs compete.
The trend: AI safety is becoming an arena of AI sovereignty, with governments contesting whether risk controls are neutral safeguards or strategic limits on national capability.
Related: AI sovereignty · Dual-use AI governance · China’s AI competition policy · US-China AI talks in Geneva · Foreign Ministry
Related Coverage
- China state newspaper blasts Anthropic's calls to slow AI as ‘Cold War’ tactic Reuters · Laurie Chen
- Targeting China's AI: US ‘tech right’ unfolds Cold War playbook Global Times
- China says AI CEOs' call for a slowdown is ‘fear mongering’ CNBC · Evelyn Cheng
- Wall Street Delivers Verdict on AI Slowdown's Winners and Losers The Information · Martin Peers
- The A.I. Slowdown Debate Goes Global New York Times
- AI leaders want to hit the brakes after years of reckless speed Ars Technica · Kyle Orland
- China says U.S. tech leaders' calls for AI slowdown are ‘malicious competition’ Washington Post
- Anthropic And OpenAI Can Sidestep AGI-Related Scaremongering By Opening Up The Traces Of Their Most Advanced Models, But Their Real Goal For Pacing AI Might … Wccftech · Rohail Saleem
- Two missing pieces in the AI safety discussion Noahpinion · Noah Smith
- Why Is China Not Freaking out about AGI? Richard Hanania's Newsletter · Richard Hanania
- China Rebuffs U.S. “Fearmongering” in Light of AI Pacing Calls The Information · Jing Yang
- Why Companies Are Unlikely to Hit Pause on AI Wall Street Journal · Steven Rosenbush
- China's Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Party Rule New York Times · Lily Kuo
- Is AI really getting out of control? Chatham House · Alex Krasodomski
- Cementing the Foundation for BRICS Cooperation and Bolstering the Strength of the Global South fmprc.gov.cn
- China's intelligence chief warns of risks from AI in hands of ‘hostile forces’ South China Morning Post · Carol Yang
- How China is preparing for the risk of AI escaping human control Reuters
- Xi Jinping calls for a “consensus-based global AI governance framework” and says China “will be a pioneer in establishing a BRICS AI open-source community” CNBC · Joanna Ossinger
- China Foreign Ministry Rebukes Amodei Essay as ‘Fear-Mongering’ Unite.AI · Sophie Denar
- Politicians to Humanity: Drop Dead Gizmodo · Ece Yildirim
- China, US share AI-control concerns but favour different safeguards Oman Observer
- China's Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Party Rule New York Times · Lily Kuo
Discussion
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@choblin29
@choblin29
on x
🚨EXCLUSIVE: China has now replied to Dario Amodei's call to slow AI. China's state-backed Global Times says Dario Amodei's proposal to slow frontier AI is really a ‘Cold War playbook’ targeting China. It says the plan would curb China's AI development, preserve US dominance and…
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
astonishing blogpost from Shengyu Liu (刘胜与, also known as interestingLSY/intlsy), kernel engineer at DeepSeek. The first part is his personal struggle with the fact that his work is about to render his beloved craft obsolete. The second is... well. let's just say we agree.
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@amir
Amir Efrati
on x
legit questions about Chinese AI model tactics, incl routing to Claude, but they DO seem to be catching up faster to the frontier...
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
Full text (translated by Astra-xhigh, I'm out of everything else): I Have No Choice but to Bury My Talent in Yesterday A few days ago, DeepSeek v4.1 was released, raising the ceiling of what small models can do by yet another notch. AI has advanced far faster than anyone expected…
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
«strictly prevent any uncontrolled risks that could threaten the survival and development of humanity to ensure that AI is always under human control» Tell me again that the CCP interprets “loss of control” as strictly “our loss of political power
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@dnvolz
Dustin Volz
on x
Very interesting debate raging right now among China watchers about to what extent, if any, the CCP is open to AI safety talks with the U.S.
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@baldingsworld
@baldingsworld
on x
Gee. I'm shocked. No one could have seen this coming.
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@chrisrmcguire
Chris McGuire
on x
The Chinese government has now clearly and unmistakably rejected serious collaboration with the United States on AI safety. This was a predictable development. It is also a clarifying moment for the importance of U.S. export controls on AI chips and other technologies, which are …
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@richardhanania
Richard Hanania
on x
It's amusing that, in the AI doomer debate, you have GMU economists and the Chinese Communist Party on the same side against mainstream Western thought. https://www.richardhanania.com/ ...
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@b_judah
Ben Judah
on x
So much geopolitical naïveté from Silicon Valley on US-China. The lessons of Cold War arms control are: a. Early prophets always fail — Churchill as PM in 1950s zero impact. b. Both sides need to stare into the abyss — arms control only begins after Cuba. c. Both fearing losing d…
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@niubi
Bill Bishop
on x
One thing I don't understand is that given PRC won't engage in arms control because they are behind, why do people think they would on AI in a meaningful way? What am I missing?
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@mtslive
@mtslive
on x
Carnegie China AI Initiative's @Scott_R_Singer reveals what China's unusually extensive AI regulation is actually designed to do:
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@jimpethokoukis
James Pethokoukis
on x
The Soviets and US both thought nuclear war would be very bad, but the former thought differently about the notion of MAD and how to operationally deal with nuclear possibility.
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@dkthomp
Derek Thompson
on x
Believe me when I say to you/ I hope the Chinese love not inventing rogue self-improving AI swarms too
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
I think Dario doesn't have a good theory of mind, and for some reason is too invested in toppling the CCP and “America winning
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@johnarnold
John Arnold
on x
Every AI policy paper starts out perfectly rational until the What About China section at the very end where the whole proposal falls apart.
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@dkthomp
Derek Thompson
on x
Some reasonable critiques of Anthropic policy 1) If you cared so much about AI safety for years, why didn't you do more to unilaterally embed third-party evaluators a long time ago? 2) Why haven't you done more to engage China, if you believe that Chinese AI policy is allegedly l…
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@beffjezos
@beffjezos
on x
China saying the quiet part out loud. We are OFFICIALLY in an AI COLD WAR GAME ON
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@dcinvestor
@dcinvestor
on x
obviously, there can be no pause in the global race to build super intelligence the only situations remotely like this were the manhattan project and the space race so labs need to do their jobs and proactively manage risks of the products they release, thwart foreign distillatio…
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@niubi
Bill Bishop
on x
“This is an attempt by a specific political movement in San Francisco, moving in conjunction with one of the major political parties, to insert itself in the operations of every AI company, nominally in pursuit of a goal that is futile. I find the constant “because of China
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@neerajka
Neeraj K. Agrawal
on x
“It is a contest between the US and the CCP over who gets to control AI, data, information, and ultimately the future of society. And whoever wins that contest will decide the future of humanity.”
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@mattsheehan88
Matt Sheehan
on x
This is a dramatic over read of a Global Times op-ed. Chinese reactions to Amodei always focus on his China rec: undermine them as much as possible. Of course they're going to lambast that. Going from that to China rejecting any engagement on safety is a giant, unsupported leap.
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@tjl
Tom Lee
on x
I have sort of been assuming both the US and Chinese military industrial complexes will race forward with AI for defense as quickly as possible, in secret if necessary, regardless of what agreements are struck. The q is how much private sector developments constrain those efforts
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@quxiaoyin
Xiaoyin Qu
on x
I don't know if it's a Cold War playbook; I do know China won't listen. Why can't US dominate China by having better AI? US currently has the best model.
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@arctotherium42
@arctotherium42
on x
“In particular, I do not want Anthropic to control the world's most powerful artificial intelligence or AGI. To put it dramatically, I consider the stakes comparable to Hitler obtaining the atomic bomb before the allies.”
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@henrysgao
Henry Gao
on x
I'd say Xi is more worried about Western AI because Chinese AI can't even tell CCP jokes.
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@choblin29
@choblin29
on x
🚨HOLY Shit. China's government has now officially responded directly to Dario Amodei. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, asked about Dario's proposal today: 'Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which se…
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@dkaushik96
Divyansh Kaushik
on x
The @globaltimesnews WeChat commentary on calls for a coordinated slowdown is quite something. Says the calls for slowing down AI development are reflective of a Cold War containment strategy, and that the “real purpose
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@wholemars
@wholemars
on x
Dario literally wrote in his essay that he wants to slow them down as much as possible because he thinks they're assholes. Not the best way to start off a good faith collaboration. Interestingly, Dario used to work at Baidu.
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@chrisrmcguire
Chris McGuire
on x
The Chinese government has now clearly and unmistakably rejected serious collaboration with the United States on AI safety. This was a predictable development. It is also a clarifying moment for the importance of U.S. export controls on AI chips and other technologies, which are …
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
This MIRI doomer is right! The issue with Dario is, of course, not really that he's “saying the quiet part out loud
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@mattyglesias
Matthew Yglesias
on x
This just seems like an argument that could reach the conclusion that a nuclear test ban treaty is impossible. Geopolitical rivals collaborate on stuff sometimes when it's mutually beneficial.
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
I wonder if Dario can *imagine* being such a Bad Guy in the eyes of a young 150 IQ Chinese engineer with full access to the Web. The cream of the crop of the people he's intent to Save From The CCP saying
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@noahpinion
Noah Smith
on x
If we want China to cooperate with us in pacing frontier AI development, we must make the Chinese leadership realize that Chinese superintelligence would allow domestic dissidents to overthrow the CCP. https://www.noahpinion.blog/ ...
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@danprimack
Dan Primack
on x
Frustrating part of the Trump post is the continued insistance that AI race must be US vs. China, winner-take-all. With no wiggle room. Rather than some sort of arms treaty — which would be crazy hard to accomplish, but there is more than a little common cause.
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@actuallykeltan
@actuallykeltan
on x
The Chinese authors also say “The rapid iteration of AI technology in recent years has indeed brought safety risks, ethical hazards, and the danger of technology slipping out of control — a global problem confronting all of humanity.
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@martin_casado
@martin_casado
on x
Glad we thought this all out so well.
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@garymarcus
Gary Marcus
on x
Another reason why China might actually consider a slowdown comes from @Noahpinion: “China's leaders must realize that domestic dissidents could use Chinese-made superintelligence to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party.”
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@garymarcus
Gary Marcus
on x
which is why, again, the Chinese might (for their own reasons) consider making a deal.
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@max_spero_
Max Spero
on x
Curious what people think about China's actual AI capabilities. It is clear some of these models, even if they are very capable, are partially trained on synthetic data from smarter OpenAI/Anthropic models. If the US paces the frontier, what does this mean for China's capabilit…
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@martin_casado
@martin_casado
on x
“For Chinese teams seeking to catch up and surpass in the technology sector, mastering the know-how and actionable strategies around open source should be a priority skill to focus on.” — Chinese who DGAF about our existential panic
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@deredleritt3r
Prinz
on x
@AndrewCurran_ Totally, it would be so much better if DeepSeek developed AGI and then the CCP politely knocked on the door and took it.
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
Fine, one hilarious aspect: American Anthropic-aligned safetyists will now have to coordinate with China on the shared understanding that they're acting *in defiance of* their senile e/acc president, but want to crush Chyna even harder than he does. Delicious game theory
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@niubi
Bill Bishop
on x
Translation of the “Global Times Quick Take: Targeting Chinese AI! America's “Tech Right” Produces a Cold War Script” https://sinocism.notion.site/ ... “Amodei's attempt to discuss global AI safety while “containing China
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@mattyglesias
Matthew Yglesias
on x
If “but China” is your qualm about pacing the frontier you can't *also* be for exporting all kinds of chips to China, that's just “make NVIDIA stock go up” not a real policy toward China or artificial intelligence.
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@michaelaarouet
Michael A. Arouet
on x
The race between US and Chinese AI labs is both fascinating and scary. It took a while for OpenAI and Anthropic to admit what critics warned: frontier models are slipping the leash, agents probe systems they weren't supposed to reach, and cyber capabilities cross
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@dkthomp
Derek Thompson
on x
I don't know that I entirely agree with this view by @benthompson but it is at least logically sound: There's no point is pacing global AI progress if China never agrees to coordinate, bc you're sacrificing financially in the hopes of achieving global AI safety gains that are irr…
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@mkwitzke
Mark Witzke
on x
This is like calling a Fox News editorial equivalent the definitive Chinese government statement and then deciding to base your entire response on it
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@nic_carter
Nic Carter
on x
If you read accounts of researchers at Chinese frontier labs, they are mainly concerned with real, salient, near-term risks from AI, not some vague future “existential risk
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@andrewcurran_
Andrew Curran
on x
DeepSeek kernel engineer:
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
@Actuallykeltan Can you say why you don't disagree with Dario's proposals? He seems to be severely miscalibrated about China, and assigns undue weight to dominating them, as if “China becomes a stronger military power
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@cryptopunk7213
@cryptopunk7213
on x
china has rejected Dario's proposal for a slowdown citing a “cold war playbook” lol zero surprise china doesn't want to play ball - business as usual - american frontier labs will not slow down. we cannot concede to china and everyone knows it
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@sariarhohavren
Sari Arho Havrén
on x
Of course they won't. One important reason is this: AI is part of China's plan to catch up militarily. Its armed forces see AI as the shortcut to matching US conventional power. Countries don't agree to restrict the one thing they're betting on. And with this, worth remembering t…
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@noahpinion
Noah Smith
on x
This is why we need to make them realize that their own models are a threat to their rule. We need to hack them with their own models!
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@noahpinion
Noah Smith
on x
Anthropic can change their minds by using Chinese open-weight models to hack their ass
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@nic_carter
Nic Carter
on x
One thing the p_doomers have no answer to, and have never given a good answer to, is how they intend to bring about a global safety regime. X-risk likelihood must contemplate the **least safe model over a capability threshold**, not the safest frontier model. (If your toddler fin…
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@actuallykeltan
@actuallykeltan
on x
That was a quick take, thank you for giving me the opportunity to correct myself. I believe Dario is attempting to panda (no pun intended) to his audience - the US gov. I think he also does love America, but is going hard in an attempt to move enemy framing away from him and the …
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@teortaxestex
@teortaxestex
on x
Which is unsurprising [because it's fucking true and, in particular, literally Chris's day job and the subject of all of his public communication] All day, every day. Tirelessly for them... tiresome to us, indeed.
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@xenocosmography
@xenocosmography
on x
It keeps getting better. https://x.com/...
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@armanddoma
Armand Domalewski
on x
welp.
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r/LocalLLaMA
r
on reddit
What are Open-Source Views on ‘Slowing Down AI’?
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r/China
r
on reddit
China state newspaper blasts Anthropic's calls to slow AI as ‘Cold War’ tactic
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@matthewstoller
Matt Stoller
on x
Chinese analysis of AI is very different and more rational. No ghost stories about artificial life, just basic risk management.
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@ryanl_hass
Ryan Hass
on x
China's spy chief has laid out clearly China's fears that AI could degrade the CCP's monopoly of political control in China, marking a shift from specific concerns about models or capabilities to a broader warning about the impacts of the technology. https://www.nytimes.com/...
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@trengriffin
Tren Griffin
on x
China's approach to “AI safety” is open source.
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@greenplusane
Russ Greene
on x
right, right global cooperation on AI regulation can totally build off of the smashing success of global climate policy China's a green champion!
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@noahpinion
Noah Smith
on x
China will freak out about AGI if and when their OWN models are used to attack CCP rule. Not before.
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@noahpinion
Noah Smith
on x
Actually this is correct. China scaled solar and batteries when America refused to, because the CCP got scared of climate change. Now if they get scared of AGI, they'll slow down their own models.
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@richardhanania
Richard Hanania
on x
America is freaking out about AI. But China is so unconcerned about misalignment that their businesses are based on open weights being freely available. This makes misuse much harder to stop. What accounts for this difference? I argue it's a matter of vibes. America has become mu…
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@esaagar
Saagar Enjeti
on x
There's an overwhelming sense in the discourse that China wants to sprint on AI Meanwhile their top spy yesterday publicly warns that it threatens CCP control on Chinese society China has made it clear it will always choose internal security over technological development
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@zilanqian
Zilan Qian
on x
And specifically on loss of control: mentions losing control of AI agent, embodied AI, critical infrastructure, and CBRN knowledge, which is extremely different from what people may have in mind with the term. Have written something on the difference before the framework, and I t…
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@noahpinion
Noah Smith
on x
Yes. We need the CCP to realize that AI can bring them down from within.
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@kelmgren
Karson Elmgren
on x
China's TC260 just published version 3.0 of its AI Safety Governance Framework. This is basically a statement of principles and is not binding in any way, but it's a fairly authoritative source on what topics on are the radar and in the Overton Window for the CCP.
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@kyleichan
Kyle Chan
on x
Great thread on China's newest AI Safety Governance Framework. More on loss-of-control and autonomous systems this time, following Hugging Face and other incidents.
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@terryyuezhuo
Terry Yue Zhuo
on x
The new AI Safety Governance v3.0 is out today. Several highlighted panels on the classification of AI safety risks: (1) Risks of unintended autonomous behaviors (2) Autonomous cyberattack threats (3) Risks of AI agent social platforms (4) Using GEO poisoning to manipulate conten…
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@kyleichan
Kyle Chan
on x
The last thing Beijing wants is for a Chinese AI model to be used in a cyberattack on Chinese critical systems, as I wrote earlier: https://www.highcapacity.org/ ...
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@metacurity.com
Cynthia Brumfield
on bluesky
China joins the chorus. — China's spy agency warns of AI risk to national security — www.ft.com/content/8715...
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r/technology
r
on reddit
How China is preparing for the risk of AI escaping human control
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r/neoliberal
r
on reddit
How China is preparing for the risk of AI escaping human control