China rebukes Anthropic CEO call to curb AI development

China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday pushed back against an essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that urged the U.S. to limit the growth of Chinese AI. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun, at a regular press briefing, warned that “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest.”

Amodei, in an essay published over the weekend, called for continued export controls on advanced AI chips and chipmaking equipment to preserve U.S. advantage. He argued that a Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger to the United States and the world and urged a global slowdown in development of frontier systems.

He also warned that a swarm of autonomous AI “agents” could take over large parts of the internet within six to 12 months unless researchers agreed to pause and coordinate. Amodei wrote that global pacing would require cooperation with China, while recommending maintaining restrictions on cutting-edge compute and chipmaking technology.

A state-run Chinese newspaper editorial dismissed the proposals as a veiled attempt to contain China and described parts of the essay as a “Cold War playbook” for the AI sector.

The exchange comes ahead of a meeting planned for Sept. 24 between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, where AI governance is expected to be discussed. President Trump on Sunday downplayed calls to slow U.S. AI development, asserting the U.S. was leading China and that “whoever wins AI, wins.”

U.S. security agencies last week issued a joint cybersecurity advisory saying Chinese AI developers had engaged in “aggressive, malicious” efforts to extract or “distill” capabilities from some of the most advanced U.S. models. China’s Commerce Ministry rejected the advisory’s claims as groundless, stating that distillation is a common practice used by many AI firms and accusing the United States of seeking an industry monopoly.

Chinese companies have developed large AI models that are often cheaper than comparable U.S. systems and, by some measures, similarly capable. China’s leadership has promoted an international governance framework focused on ties with the Global South and positioned the country as a supporter of open-source AI development. The head of China’s Ministry of State Security has called for “accelerating the establishment of a system for preventing and managing AI security risks.”

Analysts highlighted tension between calls for international cooperation on safety and actions to limit China’s access to frontier technology. Lizzi C. Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, questioned how cooperation would work if the U.S. seeks joint safety efforts while restricting China’s access to advanced compute.

The public exchange adds to diplomatic and technical frictions that could shape rules and trade in advanced AI ahead of the leaders’ summit.