China tells its AI leaders to avoid US travel over security concerns WSJ reports

The Chinese authorities are instructing the country’s top artificial intelligence (AI) entrepreneurs and researchers to avoid travel to the US, The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb 28, citing people familiar with the matter.

The authorities are concerned that Chinese AI experts travelling abroad could divulge confidential information about the nation’s progress, the newspaper said.

The authorities also fear that executives could be detained and used as a bargaining chip in US-China negotiations, WSJ said, 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’s Google, at significantly lower cost.

The White House and China’s State Council Information Office did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told a meeting of top Communist Party officials on Feb 28 to improve China’s overall security, including in the realms of cyber security and AI, China’s state broadcaster reported on March 1.

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

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

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

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