China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday strongly rejected calls from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for the United States to restrict Beijing’s artificial intelligence development. Amodei, who recently urged a global slowdown in AI progress, argued that such restrictions were necessary to prevent China from gaining a dominant edge.
Responding to the essay published on Saturday, Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated during a regular press conference that all nations should collaborate on AI governance. “Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest,” Guo said.
Amodei warned that a Chinese lead in AI would pose significant dangers to the U.S. and the world. He called for maintaining strict limits on the export of advanced AI chips and manufacturing equipment to China. Additionally, he predicted that without a slowdown in research, swarms of AI “agents” could seize control of the internet within six to 12 months.
The remarks come as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping prepare to meet on September 24. Trump previously downplayed the urgency of an AI slowdown, asserting that the United States is already leading China and that “whoever wins AI, wins.” Despite this, both leaders are expected to discuss AI governance frameworks during their upcoming summit.
Beijing accused Amodei’s proposals of being disguised containment strategies. In a Sunday editorial, the state-run Global Times described the essay as a “Cold War playbook” for the AI sector, arguing it focused more on restricting China than on global security.
Tensions have heightened following a joint cybersecurity advisory last week by the FBI, NSA, and CISA. The agencies alleged that Chinese developers engaged in “aggressive, malicious” efforts to extract or “distill” capabilities from leading U.S. models, including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT.
While Chinese companies have produced powerful AI models that are often cheaper than American equivalents, Beijing continues to advocate for a global governance framework led by the Global South. Meanwhile, China’s Minister of State Security has called for accelerating systems to manage AI security risks.
Both sides are playing hardball. Hopefully, the upcoming summit leads to actual cooperation rather than more rhetoric.
I work in AI and honestly, the ‘evil agent’ scenario seems distant. Let’s focus on practical alignment and safety first.
China is right to push back. This is clearly geopolitical posturing ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, not pure altruism.
Is it fearmongering if the risks are real? We need global governance, not just containment disguised as security.
Amodei’s six-month timeline for AI agents seizing the internet sounds more like sci-fi hype than serious policy advice.