After the U.S. government criticized Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) corporations including DeepSeek and Alibaba for allegedly bypassing access controls on U.S. corporations' AI models, mass-collecting answers, and using them to develop their own models, China's Ministry of Commerce pushed back, saying the United States is trying to monopolize the AI industry.
China's Ministry of Commerce said on the 9th on its website that "the U.S. announcement is yet another clear piece of evidence that it is pursuing technological hegemony in AI, monopolizing computing power, and suppressing competition," adding that "the United States is politicizing and instrumentalizing normal technological and commercial issues in the industry."
The "normal technology" the ministry mentioned refers to "distillation," a technique in which a high-performing large AI trains a smaller or lower-performing AI. It works by posing numerous problems to the large AI, receiving its answers and reasoning, and using them as training data for the smaller AI. The U.S. government said Chinese corporations mass-collected model outputs from corporations such as OpenAI and Anthropic without permission and used them to develop their own AI.
The ministry said, "Distillation is a commonly used method in which AI models learn from one another. It is inherently a neutral technology and is used by AI model corporations worldwide, including U.S. corporations," adding, "This is a typical double standard." It added, "If the United States seeks to suppress Chinese corporations under the pretext of cracking down on distillation, China will strike back with resolute measures."