Chinese authorities have ordered leading entrepreneurs and artificial intelligence experts to avoid traveling to the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Beijing views AI as an economic and national security priority.
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Chinese leaders fear that AI experts traveling abroad could leak sensitive information about the country’s actual achievements. They also fear that the experts could be detained and used as bargaining chips in U.S.-China negotiations, as happened to Huawei during Donald Trump’s first term.
AI has become the latest tech battleground between the US and China, with China’s DeepSeek and Alibaba challenging the US’s OpenAI and Google, and Beijing increasingly pressuring its own frontier entrepreneurs to act in line with state interests. The result is driving another wedge between the two countries’ tech communities, already divided by US sanctions on semiconductor manufacturing. Amid rising geopolitical tensions, China is seeking to strengthen its economy and make its tech industry self-sufficient.
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There is no outright ban on international travel, but there are guidelines from governments in China’s tech hubs, including Shanghai, Beijing, and Zhenjiang, a province near Shanghai where Alibaba and DeepSeek operate. They discourage executives at tech companies in areas such as AI and robotics from traveling to the U.S. or its allies unless it’s an emergency. Those who decide to go anyway are required to disclose their plans before leaving and report to authorities what they did and who they met. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng declined an invitation to an AI summit in Paris in February. Last year, the head of another major AI startup canceled a trip to the U.S. after talking to authorities.
On February 17, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a meeting with the country’s top businessmen, reminding them of the need to maintain a “sense of national duty” when developing technology. Among those present were DeepSeek’s Liang and Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Robotics, a maker of humanoid robots. Publicly acknowledging Chinese entrepreneurs’ ties to the US or famous Americans could attract unwanted attention from the authorities, displeasure from the country’s leadership, and concerns that such a citizen is acting contrary to official policy.
Still, the Chinese continue to collaborate with the Americans in many parts of the tech industry: Unitree and many other Chinese companies have exhibited at the annual CES trade show in Las Vegas. Another problem is the brain drain, with many wealthy Chinese moving abroad in recent years. Beijing will showcase the potential for collaboration in AI this summer when it hosts its own AI summit. The government has said it welcomes experts from around the world.