Worried that AI is moving too fast? China is not on board with hitting pause. On Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, "Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt [the] process of global AI governance," responding to questions about industry leaders such as Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk urging a slowdown.
At the same time, China's Minister of State Security, Chen Yixin, published a Sunday article calling for accelerating the buildout of a system to prevent and control AI security risks. He described AI as "the main battleground for global technological competition and a new arena for strategic rivalry among major powers," and argued development should be "healthy and orderly."
Amodei, in an essay posted Saturday, tried to thread the needle: "Not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless." He wrote that any slowdown is constrained by the edge U.S. companies have over "authoritarian regimes, chiefly the Chinese Communist Party," adding, "If we slow down by more than this amount, then (unpaced) CCP-associated projects will pull ahead, creating significant national security risk."
Traveling in Ireland, U.S. President Donald Trump rejected the calls to slow down. "Look, we're leading China in AI... and, frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins," he said.
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AI-adjacent stocks sold off Monday. In Japan, SoftBank - among OpenAI's largest backers - fell 10%.
Adoption of Chinese AI systems is picking up among Western companies as those models have improved. And the capability gap may be tighter than many assume. Helen Toner, executive director of Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former OpenAI board member, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" Monday: "The best estimates tend to say China's very best models are something like six to nine months behind the very best U.S. models." She added, "If that means that we slow down and they just rip past us because they're pretty close behind - that's a problem," while noting that the extent to which Chinese progress merely mirrors U.S. breakthroughs is uncertain, and suggesting that a deceleration at America's cutting edge could similarly slow China's trajectory.
Over the weekend, at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, President Xi Jinping declared that China will spearhead efforts to support AI collaboration and development among developing nations.
Policymakers are sending mixed signals on how fast to push AI, and markets are listening. Monday's drop, including SoftBank's 10% slide, shows how quickly AI narratives can swing prices. Toner's 6 to 9 month estimate frames the race: shifts in that window could redirect capital, partnerships and product bets, including toward Chinese models that more Western firms are beginning to use. Keep an ear on phrases like "healthy and orderly" development versus "national security risk" - those aren't just talking points, they are trading catalysts.
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