Does China Want an AI Slowdown? How China Sees AI Risks and How They're Trying to Regulate AI

Can the US and China agree to slow down AI development—or even agree on what counts as an AI risk?

In this episode of the High Capacity podcast, I talk with Kendra Schaefer, partner and head of tech policy research at Trivium China, about China’s approach to AI safety. We discuss AI service registration, the regulatory gaps around open-weight releases and AI agents, and why Chinese policymakers may see some risks differently from their US counterparts. We also explore where US-China cooperation on AI safety might begin.

Topics covered:

• Why China does not necessarily see regulation as a slowdown

• Anthropic’s calls to slow frontier AI development

• China’s AI service registration and safety testing process

• The challenge of regulating open-weight model releases

• AI agents, incident reporting, liability, and traceability

• How China assesses technical, social, and geopolitical AI risks

• What the US and China could discuss in an AI safety dialogue

  
  

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