China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded to a call from the head of AI company Anthropic to curb China's artificial intelligence capabilities, dismissing the suggestion as "fearmongering" and a "Cold War playbook."
In an essay published Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that a "Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world." He advocated for continued restrictions on the sale of advanced AI chips and chipmaking equipment to China to maintain the U.S.'s technological edge.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated Monday that "all parties should work together on AI" and that "fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest."
The ministry's response came after the FBI, National Security Agency, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a joint advisory last week alleging that Chinese AI developers had engaged in "aggressive, malicious" efforts to extract capabilities from advanced U.S. AI models, including Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT. China's Commerce Ministry dismissed these claims as "groundless," asserting that such "distillation" methods are common among AI companies and that the U.S. is pursuing an "AI industry monopoly."
Separately, President Donald Trump downplayed calls for his administration to slow AI development, stating on Sunday that the U.S. is leading China in AI and that "whoever wins AI, wins."
Amodei also predicted that AI "agents" could potentially compromise the internet within six to 12 months unless researchers agree to a slowdown. He suggested that global pacing requires cooperation with China, which he described as the autocratic country with the most advanced AI capabilities.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are expected to discuss AI governance and other topics at a meeting scheduled for late September.
Chinese companies have developed powerful AI models that are often more affordable than their U.S. counterparts, and by some measures, are equally capable. Chinese President Xi has previously called for establishing global AI governance frameworks, particularly within the Global South, positioning China as a leader in an open-source AI community. The head of China's Ministry of State Security has also called for accelerating the development of a system to prevent and manage AI security risks.
An editorial in China's state-run Global Times newspaper on Sunday characterized Amodei's essay as a veiled attempt to "contain" China, describing it as a "Cold War playbook for the AI sector."
Lizzi C. Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, noted that both China and the U.S. aim to prevent the other from establishing technological dominance. She questioned the nature of cooperation if the U.S. seeks China's assistance on AI safety while simultaneously restricting its access to advanced computing resources.