BEIJING: China’s Foreign Ministry (FM) and Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on Tuesday voiced opposition to a US ban on federal civilian agencies procuring or using products and services developed by Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek, criticizing Washington’s use of national security as a pretext to suppress Chinese companies and pledging to firmly safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.
China consistently opposes the US overstretching the concept of national security and politicizing science and technology as well as economic and trade issues, FM spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular press briefing on Tuesday, adding that China will firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.
On the same day, a MOFCOM spokesperson said the US has ignored the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, disregarded the overall interests of China-US economic and trade relations and taken discriminatory restrictive measures against Chinese AI companies at the pretext of so-called national security. This is a typical act of overstretching the concept of national security and abusing administrative means to suppress Chinese enterprises.
China will closely monitor developments and take all necessary measures in response to any actions that cause substantive harm to China’s interests, firmly safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests, the spokesperson said.
The US administration has barred civilian government agencies from using products or services from Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek, citing a potential threat to national security from the company’s operations in China, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
According to a notice published by the US Department of Homeland Security on the Federal Register website, federal agencies must remove any DeepSeek products from existing systems. The order also extends to DeepSeek-affiliate products and to third-party products and services that were developed using DeepSeek’s models.
The procurement restrictions took effect immediately, according to the order.
Chinese experts said that the decision adds to a broader US tactic of using the concept of national security to target Chinese companies, and they warned such restrictions could raise costs for US government departments and contractors seeking cost-effective AI tools, especially if they must turn to more expensive alternatives.
Ma Jihua, a senior telecommunications analyst, said that the measure will have far-reaching consequences for US government agencies and relevant contractors, substantially driving up their AI application costs. He added that politicizing technological cooperation will only make domestic US companies pay the price.
Ma told the Global Times that the US is developing three coordinated approaches to counter Chinese open-source models. In addition to strengthening anti-distillation measures and developing its own open-source models, it is also aiming to gradually raise the compliance costs and political risks for American companies that use Chinese models through government procurement bans, restrictions on defense supply chains, and Congressional investigations.
However, Ma said that the order may have limited impact on the global adoption of Chinese open-source AI. Because such models are publicly available and can be independently deployed, Washington may be able to block their use within federal agencies but cannot fully contain their wider adoption.
The order came just days after DeepSeek released DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017, an updated AI model promising stronger benchmark performance, faster task completion, and shorter outputs than the previous version while lowering usage costs, underscoring the pace of development in China’s fast-moving AI sector.
Experience shows that similar US restrictions on Chinese applications and hardware have not only failed to block the global spread of technology but have backfired on America’s own innovation capacity and industrial competitiveness, Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
This concern was shown in the latest case, which involved Intel.
According to another report by Bloomberg on Tuesday, Intel asked the Federal Communications Commission to make an exception to a recent ban on foreign-made advanced robotics, telling the agency that it needs continued access to “niche” equipment critical to US semiconductor manufacturing.
Intel said in its petition that “there are currently no proven domestic alternatives that meet Intel’s stringent requirements, and replacing the present machines will take years,” Bloomberg reported.
Chinese analysts said that the Intel case speaks precisely to the crux of the matter. In a highly specialized global tech supply chain, erecting artificial barriers and politicizing economic and trade cooperation will ultimately undermine the production capacity and international competitiveness of American companies.
Regarding the latest US move to ban DeepSeek, experts said that the ultimate victims of the ban will be US government institutions themselves, which will lose access to quality AI services at low costs. This runs counter to the broader international trend in which Chinese large-language models are winning favor among a growing number of users, and politicizing technological cooperation does no good to the development of the US itself, they said.
Chinese large-language models are widely used internationally precisely because they offer strong performance at low cost, a combination that makes large-scale AI use affordable for individuals and public service providers, Xiang said.
According to CNBC, the share of tokens used by US companies on Chinese AI models via OpenRouter – a platform that enables developers to access a range of AI models – has been above 30 percent each week since February 8, 2026, with that figure rising as high as 46 percent. –The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
