Competition between China and the US in AI development has been spotlighted in the conversation about China's recent calls for more AI regulation.
On September 12th, 2026, China’s Secretary of the Party Committee and Minister of the Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, issued a statement in the Cyberspace Administration of China’s magazine on policy, China Cyberspace (中国网信) discussing the new goals for artificial intelligence (AI). These goals are based on Xi Jinping’s instructions for AI, who is looking to “comprehensively promote AI technological innovation, industrial development, and empowerment applications, improve the AI regulatory system and mechanisms, and firmly grasp the initiative in AI development and governance”, according to a translation of the magazine.
Chen, who is the lead of China’s intelligence agency, lists eight elements to improving AI governance - seemingly calling for more regulation alongside rapid AI development. While encouraging AI integration across industries, emphasizing AI innovation and strengthening infrastructure for AI, Chen also asks for international cooperation around AI particularly in the Global South. On top of that, AI development should be done in a safe manner, with the translation on the third and fourth elements saying: “We must prioritize the well-being of all humanity, promote the healthy and orderly development of artificial intelligence toward beneficial, safe, and fair directions, make meeting people's aspirations for a better life… Development and security must be well balanced, with accelerated formulation and improvement of relevant laws, regulations, policies, application norms, and ethical standards, building systems for technical monitoring, risk warning, and emergency response, strengthening assessment and prevention of potential risks in AI development, and safeguarding people's interests and national security.”
The statement is making headlines for explaining the ways that AI could harm China, namely by supporting propaganda against the country’s government, increasing cyberattacks on critical infrastructure along with massive data breaches of sensitive information, and forcing more violent military competition between China and its adversaries - like the US. In the NYT article covering the statement, a fellow at the Brookings Institution studying Chinese Technology and industrial policy, Kyle Chan, summarised the point Chen Yixin made: “It’s about taking these new powerful tools seriously and realizing there are a lot of vulnerabilities and China needs to move faster, and also use AI to patch those vulnerabilities, and defend against these new cyber–actors”.
This emphasis on regulation and safety is generally unaligned with the current US approach. The Trump administration has prioritized global leadership in AI innovation since the start of its second term, with the White House repealing a Biden executive order establishing regulatory guidelines on artificial intelligence within the first five days, since it “hinder[ed] AI innovation and impose[d] onerous and unnecessary government control over the development of AI.” Since then, Trump has released a cyber strategy that also pushes for AI advancements, through the fifth policy pillar, “Sustain Superiority in Critical and Emerging Technologies”. Only recently has there been some federal action AI regulation, likely triggered by the rift between the makers of Anthropic AI and Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
Curiously, conversations about the need for AI regulation and Anthropic have entered American headlines for other reasons. Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher made his resignation public on September 9th, 2026, decrying the actions of OpenAI and Anthropic on X. Coxon, reflecting on his three years in the field, sounded the alarm about the lack of guardrails that he saw: “Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives…Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Coxon’s post went viral (currently sitting at 172.6 million views), leading to AI leaders and politicians weighing in on how to proceed with safe AI development. Both Democrats and Republicans have called for more regulation around the speed of AI advancement. In an essay, the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, agreed: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” Others have not been as ready to support limits on AI use. Speaker of the House, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, explained: “We have to put some guardrails, some safety measures in place to ensure that AI doesn’t run away… But at the same time, we’ve got to make sure that we don’t lose our edge in the global competition on this with China, because that would be a national security threat. And so we’ve got to balance that appropriately.”
Competition with China has been a key factor in the arguments against AI regulation. In fact, one of the unique ways the US government has coordinated with AI companies has been to work against the distillation of American AI models by Chinese software companies. AI distillation teaches small models to imitate a bigger more complex model, allowing for the creation of AI “products that appear to perform comparably on select benchmarks at a fraction of the cost.” In the memorandum, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Director, Michael J. Kratsios explained that the administration will alert American companies and “hold foreign actors accountable”.
Keeping in line with this attitude, President Trump has cited China as a reason not to concede to today’s calls for more AI oversight: “We're leading China in AI, we're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins…And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up." Even Amodei, who requested a slower pace for AI, also discussed what the US can do to widen their lead on China’s AI strength in his essay.
With all this focus on competition, China’s announcement heralding more investment on AI security and safety could be a sign for the US to do the same. On September 15th, 2026, Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, commented on these conversations in the US AI space: “China puts equal emphasis on development and security in terms of AI. We take seriously the inherent and secondary risks of AI.” Guo pointed to the newly released “AI Security Governance Framework 3.0” as proof of this approach. As AI advancements continue - with even more autonomous AI-directed hacks, dialogue about regulation will only continue in the US and abroad.