The US and China are intensifying their race to develop powerful AI models as concerns over security, governance and technology transfer grow. Chinese companies are rapidly narrowing the gap with American rivals despite US restrictions on advanced chips and technology
Updated On – 15 September 2026, 11:40 PM
Hong Kong: As the rapid development of artificial intelligence triggers a renewed debate about its risks, the United States and China continue to race to develop increasingly powerful models even as they express concerns of their own.
The US has outpaced China and other countries for years in AI model capabilities, research, citations and other areas. But China has been rapidly catching up as an AI superpower, even as US-led restrictions have blocked it from accessing some of the most advanced technologies, including cutting-edge chips and the machines used to make them.
Experts and recent reports, including one by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, say China has emerged as an AI counterweight to the US and this year appears to be erasing the US lead.
“The gap between US and Chinese models is narrow and fragile,” said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies’ Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs.
The current debate takes on greater importance ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to Washington this month to meet US President Donald Trump, as experts say the future of AI will depend significantly on what China and the US do and don’t do.
Here’s a quick look at some of the most important Chinese AI models and the concerns in both Washington and Beijing:
Moonshot AI leads strong competition from Chinese companies
Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI made a splash with the release of Kimi K3, taking Silicon Valley by surprise with capabilities close to those of US rivals. It was ranked No. 3 globally in model intelligence in July, shortly after its release, behind Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol, according to AI benchmarking platform Artificial Analysis. But Kimi K3 now ranks ninth, behind new frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and SpaceXAI, indicating that China’s AI lead is fluid.
AI startup darling DeepSeek was the first to upend global stock markets by proving Chinese AI models were capable of challenging the US lead. The company’s R1 model, released in January 2025, was more cost-effective than similar US models. In April, DeepSeek previewed its powerful V4 model, saying it had made big improvements in knowledge, reasoning and “agentic” capabilities, referring to the ability to plan and execute multiple complex steps with limited human guidance.
The powerful GLM-5.2 from startup Z.ai, which rolled out in June, raised Silicon Valley eyebrows with comparisons to the most advanced Anthropic and OpenAI models. Z.ai then launched GLM-5.3 in August with improved coding and agentic capabilities that pushed it up the global AI model rankings.
In July, China’s Alibaba previewed its Qwen3.8-Max model, which the tech giant said was its most powerful model in the series, challenging Anthropic’s Claude Fable and OpenAI’s GPT.
China worries about AI risks to security and governance
China’s state security minister has warned that artificial intelligence poses a range of potential threats to the country, from political and ideological security to cyberattacks, data leaks and challenges to governance.
In an article published Sunday, Chen Yixin said the technology could threaten China’s political, institutional and ideological security if used by “hostile forces and individuals with ulterior motives”. Some individuals might use AI-generated deepfake audio and video to create “political rumors” on a massive scale, he wrote.
Chen specifically mentioned the capabilities of Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT as examples of how AI could be used to more easily identify and “weaponize” cybersecurity vulnerabilities. He warned that certain nations and groups can now “execute complex hacking tasks”. Top Chinese leaders have said China should accelerate AI development and pursue technological self-reliance. But they have also noted the need to control the risks and establish a global framework for AI governance.
US accuses China of extracting American model capabilities
The US has accused China’s AI developers of engaging in what it has called “industrial-scale distillation”, in which AI models are trained to copy or imitate the capabilities of more powerful ones.
In the most comprehensive report by the government to date, the FBI, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said on Sept. 8 that Chinese AI developers extracted capabilities from some of the most advanced AI models in the US in “aggressive, malicious, and targeted distillation activities”.
Also on Sept. 8, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an event that “the Chinese distill our models and they can never get ahead of us”. China has rejected the claims and said distillation is commonly used across many AI companies. It asked the United States to refrain from making “unfounded accusations” and accused the US of pursuing a “monopoly of the AI industry”.
Distillation is a standard technique used across the AI industry, but the US agencies levelled a more specific accusation that Chinese firms used unauthorised access and other methods to extract restricted capabilities from American frontier models, said Lizzi C Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis.
“These are still contested allegations at this point, but I think the strategic implication is already important,” she said.
“The US spent a lot of energy controlling the inputs into frontier AI, especially chips. But now it seems that it is finally discovering that it may also have to think about the outputs of frontier AI as a form of technology transfer,” Lee said.
“The US labs spend enormous amounts of compute pushing out the frontier. But Chinese developers can learn from those systems,” she said. “And Chinese companies then (can) release very capable open-weight models that spread globally.”