World does not want ‘AI Iron Curtain’, China’s Communist Party mouthpiece says
People’s Daily says China and US should work together to advance the development and governance of artificial intelligence
The Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper, People’s Daily, described artificial intelligence on Monday as a “new frontier” for Chinese cooperation with the US, marking one of Beijing’s clearest articulations yet of how it sees AI fitting into the bilateral relationship.
The commentary said the world did not want to see an “AI Iron Curtain” or efforts to carve up AI into rival spheres of influence.
It argued that AI should remain an area where competition and cooperation coexisted, rather than becoming another front in broader technological decoupling.
China and the United States, as two major AI powers, should work together to advance AI development and governance, it said, adding that the countries shared broad common interests in ensuring AI benefited humanity and served global development.
While extending Beijing’s long-running criticism of Washington’s “small yard, high fence” policies into the AI arena, the commentary accused “some people” in the US of viewing AI through a “zero-sum mentality” and seeking to “politicise, instrumentalise and weaponise” the technology through investment restrictions, chip export controls and cloud-computing curbs.
The bilateral AI dialogue arrangement disclosed on May 19 focused on the need for “constructive” exchanges, but the two sides have framed the initiative differently.