Responding to news on the US government mulling a ban on Chinese AI models over distillation controversy, Chinese officials accused the US of AI Hegemonism adding that it will take all measures to safeguard China’s legitimate rights.
“China urges the US to listen to the objective and rational voices of industries in both China and the US, correct its hegemonic mindset, and stop its smear campaigns and threats of sanctions against Chinese companies. China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests against any actions that substantially harm China’s interests,” said a MOFCOM Spokesperson on July 27, responding to the allegations of technology theft by US officials.
Recently, US government officials including Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) accused China based Moonshot AI of conducting mass-scale distillation (a technique developers use the outputs of a more capable model to train or improve another system) on Anthropic’s Claude Fable model to train its own Kimi K3- an open-weight AI model. Post launch of Kimi K3, there have been several media reports on US government contemplating investigations, punitive sanctions and trade restrictions against Chinese AI companies for alleged technology theft through “mass-scale distillation.”
Responding to the allegations put forth by US government officials, the MOFCOM spokesperson added, “ It is understood that many American AI companies have distilled Chinese models in their research and training. Notably, numerous American companies have publicly opposed the US threat to sanction Chinese AI companies. Nearly 200 American startups have urged the US government not to cut off access to Chinese open-source models, arguing that this would weaken the competitiveness of American companies. Some large American multinational corporations have stated that model distillation is a widely used technique across industries and that American companies should be allowed to use Chinese open-source AI models.”
Recently, a joint letter addressed to Congress was signed by over 75 US based AI/Tech companies advocating for open-weight AI models and to avoid a blanket ban on Chinese AI models. The companies have called for a open-shared ecosystem of AI on the grounds of open-source software movement back in the 80’s and 90’s. In 2025, the launch of LLM DeepSeek had raised similar concerns over distillation of AI models.
Also Read: US Alleges Moonshot AI Trained Kimi K3 on Anthropic’s Claude Fable; Internet Cries Hypocrisy
