People’s Daily published a commentary on Wednesday, titled under the pseudonym Zhong Sheng, calling for the United States to collaborate with China on artificial‑intelligence governance and to reject the notion that AI is a monopoly of great powers. It argued that both nations— the United States and China— drive most frontier AI development and that the technology’s global adoption should be governed by open‑source principles rather than zero‑sum competition.
Earlier this year the White House publicly accused China of industrial‑scale theft of U.S. AI laboratory intellectual property. The accusation followed a series of reports that American companies were extensively distilling Chinese AI models, a practice the U.S. presents as a standard industry technique while labeling the same practice by Chinese firms as an attack.
Distillation, the process of training smaller AI models from larger ones, is cost‑effective but has sparked a double‑standard debate. The U.S. frames it as a national‑security concern, while Chinese officials see it as a legitimate industry practice. The People’s Daily called the U.S. stance a “naked double standard” and warned that such rhetoric could allow the United States to monopolize AI development.
China has expressed a willingness to engage in “constructive and professional” discussions with the United States. The next‑week bilateral talks, expected to take place in Washington, will set the agenda for how the two superpowers will regulate AI usage, address distillation, and foster a non‑discriminatory, inclusive development environment. In the lead‑up to the talks, a small Beijing‑based startup that built an open‑source language model has said it will present its model’s performance data to the U.S. delegation, hoping to demonstrate the feasibility of cross‑border collaboration.