China Pushes Back on US Warnings Over Rapid AI Development

Analysts generally agree that frontier US models remain some way ahead of Chinese counterparts, though China’s development pace and quality are second only to the United States. The two countries are locked in an intensifying rivalry as each new model’s capabilities raise the stakes.

In comments reported by The Guardian, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei last Saturday pitched a “worldwide pacing of the frontier,” which he said would “require cooperation with China.” Amodei argued it was key “to keep democracies’ AI lead over autocracies as large as possible” and advocated continued export controls to China on advanced chips and machinery. Over the last few weeks, Silicon Valley insiders have warned of potential catastrophes from “loss of control” of the most advanced AIs.

Lian Jye Su of technology research group Omdia said China is “definitely not receptive” to a slowdown on US firms’ terms. For Beijing, AI is a “core sovereignty capability,” and it does not want to jeopardize progress in closing the gap with US frontier models. “It sees these calls [for a slowdown] as a bid to lock in US advantage,” Su said.

China’s foreign ministry responded to Amodei’s piece by saying “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance.” Several analysts told The Guardian it would be a mistake to assume that response meant China rejects the broader concerns raised by the essay.

This week China released the third iteration of its AI safety governance framework, a document that functions as a “mapping of the AI risk landscape and roughly what one should do about it,” said Gabriel Wagner, a researcher at Concordia, a Beijing-based AI safety consultancy. The updates include risks posed by agents, cybersecurity threats from frontier models and the issue of recursive self-improvement—an as-yet hypothetical scenario in which AI becomes advanced enough to improve itself. “In many ways, I think there is more common ground than people might assume between what Amodei is saying and what the Chinese government is saying,” Wagner said.

That contrasts with US President Donald Trump, who this week called fears AI could wipe out humanity a “hoax.” Trump is set to meet Xi in Washington next week, with AI expected to make the agenda, though analysts are skeptical a major breakthrough will happen.

The ruling Communist party, finely attuned to risks to its political control, has been proactive in ensuring the new technology develops within boundaries set by the state. Centralized authority over critical infrastructure and commercial activity means China is generally better placed than the United States “to address any AI disaster,” Omdia’s Su said. However, Chinese companies do less voluntary monitoring and evaluation work than US ones, said Leia Wang of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Neither government seems prepared for a loss-of-control incident like those outlined over the last few weeks, she said. China’s regulation is “iterative … they are quick to adapt and release new measures,” she added.

China has had an algorithm registry since 2022, but warnings on agents released this year suggest a switch in focus “from controlling what AI says to controlling what it does,” according to Concordia AI. Beijing also issued national regulations this year aimed at curbing emotional dependency on companion AIs.

At the same time, AI is being actively encouraged across the economy to promote growth, a goal enshrined in the latest Five Year Plan. Local governments are offering funding and low rents to companies to help achieve this. Education entrepreneur Boris But, who about two years ago had what he calls a “penny-drop moment” when clients began arriving with information gleaned from chatbots, recently was invited to pitch his company, Hampshire Education, to a small city three hours from Shanghai that is seeking a reputation as a tech hub. He started developing an AI study tool after concluding: “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

Factories across China’s manufacturing base are being encouraged to convert their processes into the AI era. “Safety and controllability are certainly major concerns, and they are actively discussed,” a spokesperson for Black Lake Technologies, an industrial agent platform that says it has worked with 40,000 factories, told The Guardian.