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China Is Told It’s Behind in AI. Now It’s Being Asked to Slow Down.

The Anthropic CEO wants cooperation on AI safety while widening America’s technological lead. From China, those goals look difficult to reconcile.

As Dario Amodei and Sam Altman call for slower development of frontier AI, parts of the English-language press sound increasingly apocalyptic. Amodei, a persistent advocate of restrictions on China, now wants Washington to talk to Beijing about preventing catastrophe. Yet Chinese perspectives remain strangely peripheral to a debate that supposedly cannot succeed without China.

I do not take either executive’s assurances at face value. But distrust of American AI companies does not automatically create trust in Chinese ones. Americans have legitimate questions: Do Chinese companies harbor equally expansive ambitions? And, more importantly, can China be trusted on AI safety?

Start with how the laboratories describe their work. When dangerous capabilities emerge, Anthropic and OpenAI emphasize the possibility of systems escaping human control. Chinese executives tend to frame progress differently. In reported investor discussions, DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng described his team as ordinary people. Z.ai co-founder Jie Tang has emphasized open models’ auditability and controllability. Zhilin Yang, whose company Moonshot AI develops Kimi, focuses on the technical work of scaling model capabilities.

The distinction is not simply investors versus scientists. Amodei has a research background, while Liang made his fortune in quantitative finance. Rather, I see different public postures: American executives increasingly present themselves as stewards of civilization; their Chinese counterparts more often sound like researchers building a technology.

DeepSeek illustrates the difference. Despite Liang’s financial background, its early development resembled a personally funded research undertaking more than a conventional venture-backed startup. Outside fundraising was not initially its organizing principle.

Who Gets to Define the Risk?

Before comparing the two approaches, we need to define the primary actor responsible for AI risk management: the institution or individual expected to identify AI safety risks, organize the response and answer for how those risks are handled. The question is not simply who writes the rules, but who takes responsibility for managing the danger.

In the US debate, frontier-lab CEOs increasingly cast themselves in that role. They define the risks, propose safeguards and call for third-party oversight. In China, the government occupies that position: AI safety is part of technology policy, with public authorities setting priorities and coordinating the response, while companies operate within—and help implement—that framework.

This distinction does not absolve Chinese companies of their own safety obligations, nor does it mean American CEOs possess formal regulatory authority. It identifies the central difference in the two approaches: who assumes the lead responsibility for managing AI risk.

Anthropic helped popularize Constitutional AI, an approach that trains models using explicit principles. Amodei has also argued that authoritarian governments’ access to advanced AI creates particular dangers. His latest proposal combines safety coordination with tougher restrictions on China’s access to chips, semiconductor equipment and overseas computing.

The logic is explicit: preserving and expanding the American lead would give US labs room to slow down, while increasing Washington’s leverage in negotiations with Beijing.

Alongside that geopolitical argument sits a familiar warning: sufficiently capable AI could escape human control and undermine existing social institutions. Other countries might continue developing it without adequate restraint, exposing everyone to danger.

To a Chinese reader, this combination can look both insulting and incoherent. Amodei is entitled to advocate policy. But he has no mandate to decide what constitutes an acceptable risk for another country.

If the concern is genuinely humanity’s collective safety, why must cooperation begin with preserving America’s technological superiority? If export restrictions are intended to widen the gap, why should China understand the resulting negotiations as a partnership between equals?

Even on competitive grounds, the starting positions differ. Chinese developers cannot freely purchase Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs and face constraints in assembling frontier-scale training infrastructure. Huawei’s Ascend processors offer an alternative, but replacing a chip supply also requires software, networking and manufacturing capacity. Access to competitive compute remains a practical bottleneck.

Against that backdrop, pressure to restrain China’s computing expansion does not sound like a neutral safety measure. It sounds like the stronger competitor asking the weaker one to accept a permanent handicap.

Imagine a school organizing a charitable collection, then letting its biggest bully beat donations out of the other children. The worthy cause does not legitimize the coercion. That is how this mixture of safety rhetoric and technological containment can land in China.

The Risks China Is Already Governing

China’s government-led approach starts more directly with AI’s effects on society. The premise is that deployment can gradually alter social relationships, institutions and the distribution of power.

A recent essay by Minister of State Security Chen Yixin illustrates that perspective. He discusses AI-enabled cyberattacks and espionage, unequal technological development, and governance mechanisms struggling to keep up. His concerns also explicitly include political and ideological security—an important reminder that Beijing’s definition of safety reflects its own political system.

These are not identical to a lab CEO’s warning that a model could become uncontrollable. Both belong in an AI-safety discussion, but treating them as interchangeable obscures what each side wants protected.

Consider China’s Interim Measures for the Management of Anthropomorphic AI Interactive Services, which took effect on July 15. They prohibit providers from offering minors simulated intimate relationships, including virtual relatives and romantic partners. They also prohibit emotional manipulation and practices that encourage dependency or damage real-world relationships.

The concern is understandable. A child accustomed to an artificial family member that endlessly accommodates their preferences may struggle with the disagreement and compromise that real relationships require. This is not proof that every AI companion causes harm. It is a reason to examine the incentives of services designed to keep users emotionally attached.

The logic recalls Black Mirror: shielding a child from every distressing sight does not necessarily prepare them to deal with distress. A world without visible injuries is not the same thing as learning what to do when someone is bleeding.

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