China’s Ministry of Commerce also expressed “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” against the US’s move, saying late Tuesday that the US side disregarded the consensus reached between Xi and Trump and ignored the broader landscape of China-US economic and trade relations.
Through discriminatory restrictions under “the guise of national security”, the US is trying to suppress and contain China, the commerce ministry statement said. “China will closely monitor the situation and take all necessary measures to firmly defend its legitimate rights and interests”.
DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China and the US have recently made progress in some collaboration on AI governance, including a US proposal for setting up a notification system on national security-related incidents, but they remain at odds on many issues.
AI is expected to be on the agenda when Trump and Xi meet again in mid-November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China. The two leaders last met in September as Xi made a state visit to Washington.
US-led restrictions still ban China from accessing some of the world’s most advanced AI chips and the machines that make them.
The US also has said Chinese AI startups including DeepSeek had engaged in large-scale “distillation,” or extraction of capabilities, from frontier American AI models, claims that Beijing has dismissed.
And last week, Beijing rolled out its own proposals to restrict exports of certain advanced AI models.