China Calls AI Executives' Slowdown Appeal "Fear Mongering"

China Calls AI Executives' Slowdown Appeal "Fear Mongering"

China's Foreign Ministry responded on Monday to Dario Amodei's call to slow advanced AI development by describing it as fear mongering that will disrupt global AI governance. At the same time, state-driven Chinese press is portraying the slowdown letter as an American move to preserve technological hegemony.

China's Foreign Ministry on Monday rejected the appeal from American AI executives to slow the development of advanced AI. "Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt [the] process of global AI governance," said spokesperson Guo Jiakun, according to an English translation published by Reuters (03f644da).

The Background: Amodei's Slowdown Appeal

On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for the pace of advanced AI development to be slowed. He received rare public backing from Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and the move sparked a debate about AI "doomerism" (360bd726).

Amodei's own argument, however, is far from a general slowdown. "If we slow down by more than this amount, then (unpaced) CCP-associated projects will pull ahead, creating significant national security risk," Amodei said according to the cited reporting from the essay (03f644da). In other words: the slowdown he proposes is meant to be limited, precisely because a steeper slowdown would disadvantage the United States in its competition with Chinese AI projects.

China's Response: Three Layers

The Chinese counterattack came through several channels over the weekend and on Monday:

Global Times. The state-driven newspaper wrote in an editorial that Amodei's essay was at its core about "attempting to slow China's AI development through technological barriers and regulatory monopolies, maintain Washington's monopolistic hegemony in cutting-edge technology and exclude China from the global AI governance system" — cited via a Reuters factbox (360bd726).

Chen Yixin. China's minister of state security published an article on Sunday in which he described AI as the main arena of great-power technological competition and called for accelerating the building of a system for preventing and controlling AI security risks (03f644da). In the same article, according to the Reuters factbox, he warned that advanced American models could pose serious risks to China's critical information infrastructure, and argued for a comprehensive strengthening of AI security (360bd726).

The Foreign Ministry. Monday's statement from Guo Jiakun is the most official response so far (03f644da).

A Mirror Image of the Same Framing

What stands out is how symmetrically the two sides frame the issue. Amodei defends a limited slowdown on the grounds that Chinese projects would otherwise pull ahead and create a security risk. The Chinese side responds by describing the slowdown letter itself as a national-security weapon — an attempt to halt China's advance and maintain American hegemony. Both sides treat advanced AI primarily as geopolitical competition, not as a question of AI safety across national borders. AIMag takes no position on whether either side is right; the story is the level of mutual accusation.

What Is Confirmed — and What Is Not

A couple of caveats are important for readers who want to assess the evidence base:

• Amodei's essay is not among the available primary sources. His arguments are known through quotes in the Reuters factbox and in the cited reporting.
• The Global Times editorial is known only via the same Reuters factbox, not from the newspaper directly. The same applies to Chen Yixin's warnings — they are documented only through the factbox's account of his article.
• The chronology follows the secondary reports: essay on Saturday, Chen Yixin on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry on Monday.

That does not mean the information is dubious — both media sources are established news outlets. But the precision of this overview depends on their reporting, not on documents AIMag has examined directly.