Question: Some Western commentary argues that artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming a new arena for major-country competition and rule-setting rivalry. At the same time, China emphasises open-source and open development, and promotes AI for good. How does China view openness and cooperation in the field of AI?
Embassy Spokesperson: As artificial intelligence continues to advance, the importance of international cooperation becomes ever more prominent. Scientific and technological progress should benefit all humanity, rather than become a tool for division, confrontation, or widening development gaps. At present, AI is profoundly reshaping economic and social development models, while also posing new tasks for global governance. In this context, countries have an even greater need to strengthen dialogue and cooperation, rather than pursue closure and exclusion.
China remains firmly committed to an open-source and open-development path for AI innovation, and actively advocates building an international environment for scientific and technological cooperation that is open, inclusive, universally beneficial and non-discriminatory. China opposes the overstretching of national security, the politicisation, instrumentalisation or weaponisation of economic, trade and technological issues, and the so-called “de-risking” that in essence leads to decoupling, supply-chain disruption and the erection of “small yard, high fence.”
Facts have proven that exclusion does not deliver real security, and monopoly does not foster sustainable innovation. Artificial restrictions on the flow of technology, talent and industrial exchanges will only fragment the global innovation system and hinder scientific and technological progress and industrial development worldwide. Only by upholding openness, cooperation and shared innovation can the enormous potential of AI in driving global economic growth and social progress be fully unleashed.
In the meantime, China attaches high importance to AI safety governance. China pursues an approach that gives equal weight to development and security, upholds ethics first and a people-centred philosophy, and actively promotes the building of a broadly consensual international governance framework, so as to ensure that AI is always developed in a direction that benefits humanity and advances human civilisation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has proposed the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, emphasising that the future of all countries is closely interconnected. In the face of unprecedented technological transformation, no country can tackle these challenges alone, nor can any country monopolise the future. China stands ready to work with the international community to uphold true multilateralism, deepen cooperation through openness, improve governance through cooperation, and promote the sound and orderly development of AI, so as to better enhance the common well-being of all humanity.
