Q: On October 19, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a ban on U.S. federal civilian executive agencies’ procurement of products and services developed by the Chinese AI company DeepSeek and its affiliates, and mandated the removal of such products and services from the information systems of these agencies. What is MOFCOM’s comment on this?

A: We have noted the relevant developments. China firmly deplores and rejects this.

The Chinese government puts equal emphasis on development and security, upholding a people-centered approach and developing AI for good, making AI safe, controllable and reliable, guiding its development along a path that is compliant, trustworthy, and beneficial to society. China has promulgated multiple laws and regulations, including the Cybersecurity Law and the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, to protect cybersecurity and data privacy in accordance with the law. Chinese AI companies have consistently been committed to providing safe and reliable services to users around the world, complying with the laws of the countries where they operate, and have been widely welcomed by global users.

The United States, disregarding the important consensus reached by the heads of state of the two countries and ignoring the overall interests of China-U.S. economic and trade relations, has imposed discriminatory restrictions against Chinese AI companies under the pretext of so-called national security. This is a typical act of overstretching the concept of national security and abusing administrative measures to suppress Chinese companies. In essence, it politicizes and instrumentalizes sci-tech, economic and trade issues, and pursues suppression and containment under the guise of national security. This seriously harms the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies, undermines a level playing field, and disrupts normal commercial cooperation between the two countries on AI.

China urges the U.S. to respect facts and market principles, immediately rectify its erroneous practices, stop its unjustified suppression of Chinese companies, and revoke the relevant discriminatory restrictions, thereby creating favorable conditions for normal exchanges and cooperation between enterprises of the two countries. It is hoped that the U.S. side will earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, move in the same direction with China, make effective use of the China-U.S. AI dialogue mechanism to enhance mutual trust, manage differences, and jointly promote AI for the positive and for good. China will closely follow the situation and will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests against any actions that cause substantive harm to its interests. (Released on October 20)