China tells its AI leaders to avoid US travel: report

Chinese authorities are instructing the country's top artificial intelligence entrepreneurs and researchers to avoid travel to the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Beijing is concerned that Chinese AI experts travelling abroad could divulge confidential information about the nation's progress, the newspaper said.

Authorities also fear that executives could be detained and used as a bargaining chip in US-China negotiations, the Journal reported on Friday, drawing parallels to the detention of a Huawei executive in Canada at Washington's request during the first Trump administration.

The US and China are locked in a global AI race, with Chinese start-up DeepSeek recently launching AI models that it claims rival or surpass US industry leaders such as OpenAI and Alphabet Inc's Google, at significantly lower cost.

The White House and China's State Council Information Office, which handles media inquiries on behalf of the government, did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told a meeting of top Communist Party officials on Friday to improve China's overall security, including in the realms of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, China's state broadcaster reported on Saturday.

"We should give top priority to defending the country's political security," Xi was quoted as having told other members of the governing Politburo.

The Chinese leader in February held a rare meeting with some of the biggest names in the world's second-largest economy's technology sector, urging them to "show their talent" and be confident in the power of China's model and market.

Chinese executives who choose to travel are instructed to report their plans before leaving and, upon returning, to brief authorities on what they did and whom they met, the Journal report said.

DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng declined an invitation to attend an AI summit in Paris in February, according to the report.

Another founder of a major Chinese AI start-up cancelled a planned US trip in 2024 following instructions from Beijing, the Journal said.