\n \u201cThis technology was created to serve humanity,\u201d said Xu Jingyuan, 22, a business student from Beijing. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t see it as something to fear, but as something that brings greater conveniences to our lives.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n He said the government is \u201cabsolutely capable\u201d of managing its risks.\n <\/p>\n
\n Xu\u2019s comments echoed those of several people CNN spoke to this week, reflecting a divide in attitudes toward AI in Chinese and American society, as well as differing levels of trust in respective governments\u2019 ability to handle the potential threats posed by the technology.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIn the US, there is a general public perception that without whistleblowing, big corporations could escape accountability or scrutiny due to weak government oversight,\u201d said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at technology research firm Omdia.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWhereas in China, I think there is this very strong confidence from the public that if any sh*t hits the fan, the government will step in.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
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\n Analysts also point to differences in exposure to AI, public discourse around the technology, and the broader cultural and historical context as possible explanations for the divide.\n <\/p>\n
\n In a survey by marketing research firm Ipsos<\/a> earlier this year, 83% of Chinese respondents found AI-powered products or services exciting, whereas only 33% of those in the US felt similar way. Meanwhile, another survey by marketing consultancy Edelman<\/a> showed that 86% of respondents in China said they trusted their own government to do what is right, compared with just 39% in the US.\n <\/p>\n \n A marked difference between the two nations is their political systems. While whistleblowing is routine in the US and policy debates often become messy, especially in an increasingly polarized democracy, China\u2019s top-down power structure allows the one-party state to set agendas without facing open criticism.\n <\/p>\n \n In China, the ubiquity of AI, its commercial applications and robots have helped boost the public\u2019s wide acceptance of the technology.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEveryone I know says AI has already permeated every aspect of our lives,\u201d said 51-year-old Shi Hongchao from China\u2019s northeastern Liaoning province. \u201cEveryone is either talking about it or has already started using it. It feels almost unstoppable at this point.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In China\u2019s hypercompetitive market, tech companies have been aggressively rolling out free AI chatbots and features built into applications people already use. Industries from filmmaking<\/a> and e-commerce<\/a> to manufacturing<\/a> are also integrating the technology. The productivity gains and convenience have spoken for themselves.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMost Chinese people meet AI as a cheap product first and as a debate second,\u201d said Poe Zhao, analyst and founder of Hello China Tech, a newsletter focused on China\u2019s tech industry. \u201cWhen a technology shows up as a useful, low-cost service, people judge it by what it does for them, not by what it might do to them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n This stands in stark contrast to the US, where industry executives and researchers have raised prominent concerns about the rapid advancement of AI and its potential existential risks. China, another AI superpower widely regarded as capable of rivaling the US, has been noticeably silent on the issue.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cChinese warnings are quieter and use a different vocabulary. The dominant framing is loss of operational control, malicious use and social disruption, rather than human extinction,\u201d Zhao said.\n <\/p>\n \n China\u2019s intelligence chief Chen Yixin published an article<\/a> last Sunday detailing the need to incorporate AI as a strategic industry into the country\u2019s economic development, while outlining what Beijing sees as the technology\u2019s extensive risks.\n <\/p>\n \n Beyond the familiar risks of hostile actors misusing AI to conduct cyberattacks, spread misinformation and steal state and corporate secrets, Chen also warned that the technology could destabilize society and threaten China\u2019s political security. He also cited the risks posed by certain countries\u2019 \u201cmonopolistic practices\u201d \u2013 an apparent reference to the US for its export controls \u2013 as another concern.\n <\/p>\n \n Rather than public discussions and open letters about AI\u2019s safety threats, much of the Chinese AI governance takes place behind the scenes through companies\u2019 compliance work with the authorities\u2019 technical standards, security assessments, and administrative filings, Zhao added.\n <\/p>\n \n Chinese AI companies\u2019 development trajectories also differ from those of their American counterparts, reflecting different priorities and constraints. While Chinese AI labs have rapidly narrowed the gap with US leaders such as Anthropic and OpenAI, their models still trail the most advanced American systems, in part because of constraints on computing power and capital.\n <\/p>\n \n DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng said in a leaked conference call with investors in July that the biggest gap between Chinese and American AI labs lies in access to the most advanced AI processors \u2013 essential for training AI models \u2013 due to US restrictions, as well as lower levels of capital investment.\n <\/p>\n \n Chinese AI companies are also driven more by commercial incentives to monetize and turn a profit, potentially making them less focused on developments that could trigger extreme or existential risks.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe US is really keen on pushing the boundaries more,\u201d Su of Omdia said. \u201cIn China, there may be less focus on frontier capability, but more focus on how to make AI more productive and commercial.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n China\u2019s technological advances have coincided with the country\u2019s rapid economic development and its rise on the global stage over the past decades. As the country\u2019s AI industry has grown more capable, many Chinese people have come to see that progress as further evidence of China\u2019s technological rise, Su said.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIn China, there is this very pro-AI culture,\u201d Su said. \u201cTechnology has always been viewed as a national pride.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n That view contrasts with the US, where skepticism toward large corporations and the government has grown alongside opposition to AI data centers.\n <\/p>\n \n Over the past decade, Chinese technologies \u2013 from smartphones and electric vehicles<\/a> to batteries<\/a> and supercomputers<\/a> \u2013 have increasingly gone head-to-head with US counterparts, surpassing them in some areas.\n <\/p>\n \n For many Chinese people, that history has created an implicit expectation that a new technology can deliver both economic benefits and might, said Grace Shao, a tech analyst and founder of industry newsletter AI Proem.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe average person has seen how much economic gain, prosperity, and even just convenience that technology has brought to them, so there is an unspoken assumption that AI could do the same for them,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n \n China\u2019s people also tend to look up to the government for protection, Shao added. The Communist Party has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to assert its control over the country\u2019s most powerful enterprises.\n <\/p>\n \n In 2020, Beijing launched a historic crackdown to curb the power of the country\u2019s biggest names in sectors from tech and gaming to education, wiping out over $1.5 trillion in market value from the companies affected.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere is built-in trust by the people that the government will act as a parental figure again to draw out the guardrails and guidelines for this new technology,\u201d Shao said.\n <\/p>\n \n Shi from Liaoning is one of them.\n <\/p>\n \n He believes that AI\u2019s benefits still outweigh the concerns, and the development of AI should not be slowed simply because it carries risks.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI think we should continue to invest more heavily in AI and keep developing it. After all, restricting the technology doesn\u2019t mean it will stop advancing,\u201d he said. \u201cChina is a major country. It has an even greater reason to prioritize the development of AI.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong\/Beijing\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Unlike in the United States, no one in China seems to be openly fretting over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-627348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/04-gettyimages-2285958572.JPG\")
<\/p>\n![\"Protestors](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/03-gettyimages-2295412759.JPG\")
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