China has warned of its readiness to take all necessary measures to protect its interests if the United States imposes sanctions on Chinese artificial intelligence developers. The Ministry of Commerce of China sharply criticized the Trump administration, urging Washington to end its "malicious smear campaign" and threats. The conflict stems from US accusations of improper use of American technology and intellectual property theft through model distillation methods. Beijing emphasized that these claims lack legal and factual basis, representing a blatant manifestation of hegemony in the AI sector and double standards.

Tensions escalated further following US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's statement regarding a thorough examination of Chinese AI models. Previously, American companies OpenAI and Anthropic accused their Chinese competitors of using the outputs from their advanced systems to train their own neural networks for a fraction of the original cost. In response, China's Ministry of Commerce pointed out that the distillation method is widely accepted in global practice and is also used by American firms. In addition, Beijing noted that several Chinese AI models were released almost simultaneously with their American counterparts and have reached leading positions in areas such as frontend programming.