China Calls AI Slowdown Push a Fear Campaign

China Calls AI Slowdown Push a Fear Campaign
The argument sharpened over the weekend, when Anthropic’s Dario Amodei warned that refusing to build powerful AI could deny humanity its benefits, but racing ahead would be “reckless.” His proposed pacing came with a hard geopolitical caveat: U.S. companies could not slow so much that China overtook them. China’s best models are estimated to trail the U.S. frontier by six to nine months, according to Georgetown’s Helen Toner, underscoring why even advocates of restraint fear a unilateral pause.

China’s own security establishment had already framed AI in strategic terms. On Sunday, State Security Minister Chen Yixin called for faster construction of an AI risk-prevention and control system, describing the field as a principal arena of technological competition and major-power rivalry. Yet Beijing’s public response was not a call to freeze progress. At the BRICS summit, Xi Jinping said China would help lead AI collaboration and development among developing countries.

On Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun delivered the clearest rebuttal, saying “fear mongering, confrontation, competition” would disrupt global AI governance. The formulation rejects the Silicon Valley slowdown campaign while presenting China as a supporter of international rules rather than a spoiler of them.

That position overlaps, at least tactically, with Donald Trump’s resistance to a slowdown. During a trip to Ireland, Trump said the United States led China in AI and wanted to keep it that way: “whoever wins AI, wins.” David Sacks amplified the anti-pause case online, ridiculing the expectation of an international agreement with China as a “fantasy world.”

The central split is therefore not simply safety versus speed. China says confrontation itself imperils governance; Amodei and Toner warn that restraint without reciprocal limits could create a security risk. With Chinese models gaining ground and AI-linked stocks sliding, neither side appears ready to surrender the race.

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