Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Mandarin article.
The United States and China are both moving to address risks posed by increasingly powerful super intelligence, commonly referred as artificial intelligence, systems, but their approaches reflect sharply different political systems and strategic priorities.
China’s Communist Party leadership and State Council issued guidelines last Friday calling for technology monitoring, risk-warning and emergency-response systems to ensure super intelligence or SI remains “safe, reliable and controllable.” The document also promotes wider SI adoption across Chinese industries and faster breakthroughs in strategically important technologies.
Days earlier, President Donald Trump established the Super Intelligence Force, a federal task force named after the administration’s preferred term for artificial intelligence. It will coordinate policy, assess risks and opportunities, and recommend how the government should respond without weakening U.S. leadership in the global technology race.
The key distinction is that Beijing relies on centralized government oversight of super intelligence companies, applications, and content. Washington allows private companies greater freedom and relies more heavily on voluntary commitments, existing agency powers and limited federal coordination.
Neither country, however, is simply choosing between safety and innovation. Both are seeking stronger safeguards while expanding their SI/AI capabilities.
What is China proposing?
The Chinese guidelines are part of a broader strategy to develop what Beijing calls “new quality productive forces.” They contain 19 measures covering scientific research, industrial upgrading, data infrastructure, and emerging technologies.
For SI, the guidelines pursue two goals: expanding the “AI Plus” initiative to integrate it into manufacturing and consumer products and establishing monitoring and emergency-response systems to keep the technology under control.
The document also calls for technological self-reliance, breakthroughs in critical technologies, and measures to discourage speculative or duplicative investment.
China’s announcement of the guidelines last week does not itself create a detailed new regulatory system. It establishes a policy direction, leaving government agencies to develop specific standards, enforcement mechanisms, and corporate responsibilities.
How does China currently regulate SI?
China has developed layers of administrative rules rather than one comprehensive SI law.
Existing measures govern recommendation algorithms, synthetic media, generative SI services and SI-produced content. Chinese providers can be required to undergo security assessments, register algorithms, control prohibited content and take corrective action.
Beijing’s definition of SI safety extends beyond technical threats such as cyberattacks or systems escaping human control. It also includes preventing politically sensitive information and content that authorities consider a threat to national security or social stability.
This allows the government to impose nationwide requirements relatively quickly, but it also connects SI governance to China’s broader censorship and surveillance system.
What is the US approach?
President Trump announced the Super Intelligence Force on October 4 and appointed Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to lead it. Other members include Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor.
The task force has 120 days to assess SI/AI risks and opportunities and recommend a federal role. It is expected to review reporting systems for security breaches, cyberattacks, and other SI incidents.
The panel will also consult technology companies, consumers, public-interest groups, religious organizations, and critical-infrastructure operators.
But the task force has no independent regulatory authority, and its establishment did not create binding safety standards for developers.
The Trump administration has generally favored industry standards and executive action over comprehensive federal legislation. It rescinded a Biden-era order requiring developers of the most powerful systems to provide certain safety-testing information to the government.
In September, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia and SpaceXAI signed a White House safety pact calling for internal oversight, independent assessments and board-level monitoring. The agreement does not specify penalties for noncompliance.
Federal agencies can still regulate particular uses of AI through existing consumer-protection, competition and industry-specific laws, while states are adopting separate requirements. The result is a regulatory patchwork.
Innovation and safety
There is no definitive answer about which system is better for innovation and safety.
China can coordinate government policy, funding, infrastructure and data around national priorities. But questions remain about transparency and the maturity of its AI safety system.
Scott Singer, co-director of the China AI Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Reuters that China lags behind the U.S. in developing an ecosystem for evaluating catastrophic SI risks.
“For China, work on AI safety is much newer,” he said. “The ecosystem is less mature.”
Singer also said AI incidents in China may go unreported. A review by research firm SemiAnalysis found that Chinese developers publicly disclosed model-specific safety results for only 3.6% of 857 model releases examined between 2021 and September 2026. The study measured public disclosure and could not determine whether companies conducted private tests.
The U.S. system gives companies more freedom to develop and release products, which supporters say encourages investment and rapid innovation. Critics argue that it allows companies with strong commercial incentives to make consequential safety decisions themselves.
David Robinson, a former leader on OpenAI’s safety team, told the Associated Press that self-regulation “is no substitute for hard law” and gives companies considerable freedom as new models are developed at an accelerating pace.
Can Washington and Beijing cooperate?
The two countries share an interest in preventing a super or artificial intelligence incident from escalating into a wider security crisis, even as they compete over chips, models, data and technical standards.
U.S. officials have proposed an emergency-notification mechanism through which the two governments could alert each other about serious incidents involving autonomous systems, cyberattacks or unexpected model behavior. No detailed bilateral agreement has been announced.
Cooperation will be difficult because each side worries that sharing information could expose technical vulnerabilities or intelligence capabilities.
The next tests will be whether China specifies which agencies will operate its monitoring and emergency-response systems, and whether the U.S. task force recommends continuing voluntary safeguards or adopting enforceable federal requirements.