China has rejected a reported US effort to make other governments choose a side in the ongoing US-China race for artificial intelligence leadership.

The long-running competition between Washington and Beijing over who leads the AI industry is entering a new chapter in which other nations can no longer sit and watch from the sidelines. That makes the dispute about more than bilateral technology rivalry: countries developing AI policy, infrastructure, and procurement rules are increasingly being asked to weigh access, control, and compatibility across competing systems.

Will countries be forced to choose between US and Chinese AI technology?

Responding to a reported US attempt to pressure countries that had backed an AI cooperation pact, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a briefing in Beijing that China opposes forcing countries into rival groups over AI, arguing that governments should be free to pick partners on their own terms.

Reportedly, Washington wrote to about 35 signatories of a joint statement on AI partnership, telling them they could not stay in the US-led AI initiative while also joining Chinese-backed efforts. Reuters, which reviewed an internal US draft and spoke to a US official, reported that the government is preparing to tell dozens of countries they must line up behind a US-led AI coalition or be shut out of it if they sign onto Beijing's rival framework.

Lin called for respect for each country's digital sovereignty and urged both sides to drop what he described as zero-sum thinking in favor of a fairer global system for governing AI. His stance on digital sovereignty is one previously endorsed by Beijing in a published paper on global cyber governance built around national control over data and infrastructure.

By framing the US government's actions as an attack on other countries' right to choose, China is positioning itself as the side that does not demand exclusivity — a stance aimed at winning over the same governments Washington is lobbying.

How the US-China AI dispute has escalated

In late July, China's Ministry of Commerce urged Washington to stop threatening Chinese AI firms with sanctions, calling the pressure a form of "AI hegemony" that it said lacked factual or legal grounds.

Those threats stem from claims by US companies that Chinese labs "distill" American AI models and use the outputs to train cheaper ones. Cryptopolitan has reported that a White House memo from science adviser Michael Kratsios accused entities based in China of running industrial-scale distillation campaigns, and that Chinese regulators are moving to bar domestic firms from taking US investment without approval.

Beijing has also noted that nearly 200 US startups asked their own government not to cut off access to Chinese open-source models, warning that doing so would hurt American competitiveness. That detail underscores how the contest is not only about state policy but also about the AI supply chain, where developers and startups can depend on models, chips, and cloud access that cross borders.

Cryptopolitan reported in late July that US officials added foreign-built advanced robots to a restricted list, blocking new Chinese-made robot models from being sold in the US market. The restrictions affected robotics maker Unitree (SSE: 688836), but the company still had one of the biggest stock market launches of the year, with its shares jumping 629% on their first day of trading in Shanghai. At one point, the company was valued at about $66 billion.

Meanwhile, US officials are still checking whether China has managed to obtain restricted Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) chips, a sign that enforcement over advanced semiconductors remains central to how both sides are trying to limit the other's AI capabilities.