
China, US should fight rogue AI risks together, despite tensions: ex-diplomat
But the prospect of cooperation was bleak as geopolitical tensions rippled out through the technological landscape, former Chinese foreign vice-minister Fu Ying told a closed-door AI governing panel in Paris on Monday.
'Realistically, many are not optimistic about US-China AI collaboration, and the tech world is increasingly subject to geopolitical distractions,' Fu said.
'As long as China and the US can cooperate and work together, they can always find a way to control the machine. [Nevertheless], if the countries are incompatible with each other ... I am afraid that the probability of the machine winning will be high.' The panel discussion is part of a two-day global AI Action Summit that started in Paris on Monday.
Other panel members included Yoshua Bengio, the Canadian computer scientist recognised as a pioneer in the field, and Alondra Nelson, a central AI policy adviser to former US president Joe Biden's administration and the United Nations.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


RTHK
4 minutes ago
- RTHK
RTHK chief leads students on AI trip to Hangzhou
RTHK chief leads students on AI trip to Hangzhou A ceremony was held at West Kowloon High Speed Rail station on Monday morning led by RTHK chief Angelina Kwan. Photo: RTHK One hundred students from 45 schools will be on a visit to the headquarters of major mainland tech companies as they embark on a five-day trip to Hangzhou organised by RTHK as part of its annual summer programme Solar Project. Led by Director of Broadcasting Angelina Kwan, the students will gain insights into development trends and applications of artificial intelligence, inspiring them to think about how AI can assist in societal development through visits to various innovative technology enterprises. Speaking before taking a high-speed train from West Kowloon station, Kwan said this year's event focuses on artificial intelligence and that the group will visit cultural-related attractions and facilities to understand the latest developments in the country and gain a deeper understanding of the nation's new progress. Alibaba, BrainCo and Unitree Robotics are among the mainland tech firms that the group will visit. They will also tour the National Archives of Publications and Culture in Hangzhou and explore the town of Wuzhen. They will take part in workshops and discussions at Hangzhou Normal University and Yew Wah International Education School of Tongxiang, and a series of experiential workshops that combine artificial intelligence with media, including the "AI Tech Startup Experience Day Camp" in collaboration with Cyberport and local startups, as well as the "AI Broadcasting Production Application and Public Speaking Skills Workshop" organised by RTHK.


AllAfrica
4 minutes ago
- AllAfrica
Breakneck divide: China's builders vs America's lawyers
Dan Wang has written a book that brings a new perspective to understanding the differences in style of government between China and the US and the barriers to mutual understanding. 'Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future' (W.W. Norton & Company, 2025) combines the conclusions of an economic analyst who spent the years from 2017 to 2023 living and working in China with the personal observations of a man whose Chinese parents took him to Canada when he was seven years old and who was educated in the US. Wang writes in his introduction: The starkest contrast between the two countries is the competition that will define the twenty-first century: an American elite, made up of mostly lawyers, excelling at obstruction, versus a Chinese technocratic class, made up of mostly engineers, that excels at construction. That's the big idea behind this book. It's time for a new lens to understand the two superpowers: China is an engineering state , building big at breakneck speed, in contrast to the United States' lawyerly society , blocking everything it can, good and bad. On his website, the author explains that his book is 'driven by a few simple ideas': That Americans and Chinese are fundamentally alike: restless, eager for shortcuts, ultimately driving most of the world's big changes. That their rivalry should not be reasoned through with worn-out terms from the past century like socialist, democratic or neoliberal. And that both countries are tangles of imperfection, regularly delivering – in the name of competition – self-beatings that go beyond the wildest dreams of the other. Wang describes himself as 'a Canadian who has spent almost equal amounts of time living in the United States and China.' This enables him to stand somewhat back from the hostility and resentment that have come to characterize the relationship between the two. He finds the two countries 'thrilling, maddening, and, most of all, deeply bizarre. Canada is tidy…. Drive around China and America, on the other hand, and you'll see people and places that are utterly deranged.' Wang moved to Philadelphia with his family when he was in high school and attended college in New York. After college, he went to Silicon Valley and then returned to China to study its rapid modernization. In China, Wang worked as a technology analyst at Gavkal Dragonomics, writing research reports and presenting his conclusions to investors. It was a job with demanding clients, but he also had a good time. Traveling around the country, he says, 'I grasped something that most Americans, and even many Chinese, do not: Going to little-known cities in China is fun . Wherever I went, I found amazing food, bizarre sights and memorable people.' He tried to capture those by writing an annual letter (you can read them on his website). 'The best hedge I know against heightening tensions between the two superpowers,' he writes, 'is mutual curiosity.' Wang has plenty of that, and it is contagious. A bicycle trip through the mountainous southwest province of Guizhou with two friends was full of surprises. Seven hours from Shanghai by high-speed train, Guizhou was once known as a place 'where not three feet of land is flat, where not three days pass without rain, and where not a family has three silver coins.' Today, it is still relatively poor, but crossed by highways and bridges that make a cycling trip possible, with shops selling noodles and ice cream bars for lunch and restaurants serving dinners of fish stew, braised goat, local pickles and salads and rice balls filled with sesame. Guizhou is home to the world's largest single-aperture radio telescope, known as 'China Sky Eye,' and Zheng'an county, which calls itself 'the guitar capital of the world.' According to China Daily, more than 2.25 million guitars are produced in Zheng'an every year, making it the world's largest center of guitar production. They aren't the world's best guitars, but China has displaced South Korea, which displaced Japan, as the world's largest producer of affordable guitars. Wang points out that 'Several of Guizhou's party chiefs have gone on to high positions in Beijing, including Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party before Xi Jinping. 'Chinese leaders,' he writes, 'are usually expected to administer a poor province before they can be promoted to the country's political pinnacle. In the United States, it would be as if politicians had to gain some experience in the Rust Belt or coal country before they could get anywhere near a cabinet position.' Incidentally, Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, was born in Guizhou. Wang makes only a brief mention of Huawei in the book, but it is worth pointing out that Ren, too, started out as an engineer. So did Hu Jintao. 'Engineers,' writes Wang, 'have quite literally ruled modern China.… Xi Jinping studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua, China's top science university.' And: 'What do engineers like to do? Build.' A road network twice as long as that of the US, a high-speed rail network 20 times longer than Japan's, and nearly as much solar and wind power as the rest of the world combined. The problem is, they can't stop, applying their methods to social problems even when that it not appropriate. After an inspiring description of the rise of venture capital and high-tech manufacturing in Shenzhen, Wang turns his attention to the brutal enforcement of the one-child policy and the severe Covid lockdown that drove people to desperation. Judging from the severe criticism in these chapters, it was not surprising to me that Chinese censors shut down the website where he published his annual letters. (The chapters were written after the website was shut down.) Wang also sees things that other writers tend to miss. In politics, for example, Capitalist America intrudes upon the free market with a dense program of regulation and taxation.… Socialist China detains union leaders, levies light taxes, and provides a threadbare social safety net. The greatest trick that the Communist Party ever pulled off is masquerading as leftist. While Xi Jinping and the rest of the Politburo mouth Marxist pieties, the state is enacting a right-wing agenda that Western conservatives would salivate over. In the realm of technology, Wang writes, Americans celebrate invention, whereas for the Chinese, 'innovation emerges from the factory floor.' There are three aspects to technology: tools, recipes (blueprints, patents) and process knowledge, he says. The last, process knowledge, he terms 'proficiency gained from practical experience' – and that's the one that he considers most important of the three. This is what has brought Chinese manufacturing close to the levels achieved in Germany and Japan. It is also the Japanese way of doing things, although the Japanese, unlike the Chinese, have also won an impressive number of Nobel Prizes. China is now working hard to close that gap. And what about the American lawyer-led way of doing things? Wang chooses high-speed rail to make his point. In 2008, Californians voted to fund a high-speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles. That same year, China began construction of a high-speed rail link between Beijing and Shanghai. Three years later, at a cost of US$36 billion, the Chinese railway was operational. Seventeen years later, only a quarter of the line in California has been built and the budget to completion is estimated at $128 billion. What happened? Lawyers happened. 'The United States … has a government of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers.… Americans no longer manufacture well or build public works on reasonable timetables.' The US was once, like China, an engineering state, building canals, the transcontinental railway and, not so long ago, the interstate highway system. Learning from China, therefore, would mean going back to American roots. And China, in Wang's view, could use some of the American lawyer's concern for the environment and civil rights. Breakneck will be published on August 26. Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667


AllAfrica
32 minutes ago
- AllAfrica
Eyes on spies: countering Chinese espionage in Taiwan
This article was originally published by Pacific Forum. It is republished with permission. Taiwan has seen a significant rise in espionage cases, particularly those linked to China. In 2024, 64 individuals were prosecuted for Chinese espionage, a threefold increase from 16 in 2021. Authorities have also uncovered over a thousand Taiwanese espionage cases in recent years and dismantled several espionage networks, according to the National Security Bureau (NSB). Since 2020, prosecutors have indicted 159 suspected of spying for China, with 60% being active or retired military personnel. In 2025, Taiwan's national security services estimated there were over 5,000 spies working for China in Taiwan. Chinese espionage is not confined to supporters of the Pan-Blue Coalition of relatively pro-China political parties, the largest of which is the opposition Kuomintang (nationalist party). Looking also at the more independence-leaning Pan-Green Coalition, prosecutors have charged four Democratic Progressive Party members who held responsible staff positions in government, including in the foreign ministry, with spying for China. The Chinese Communist Party is following a blueprint that gave it victory in the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949). Many of the co-opted have strong connections with China. Their parents came to Taiwan in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek. They lived in special villages set up by the government. They went to military-oriented high schools. As a result, they gained admission to military academies. After graduation, they were guaranteed jobs for life. Many of the graduates assumed that they would return to China after the Communist government fell. It's not only political groupings that are associated with colors. There are three basic approaches that Chinese espionage recruiters use to lure their prey and Taiwanese counterespionage sleuths refer to those three using color codes: Blue – Overcoming any ill feelings that the potential target has about the People's Republic of China. This can involve mission obfuscation: Are we fighting to tear down an undemocratic regime or fighting for Taiwan independence? Another topic useful for inspiring dissatisfaction with the Taiwan government has been inadequate military funding that limits acquisition of state-of-the-art military equipment. Gold – Financial inducement using cash or a lucrative business connection in China. This one was particularly effective after the previous President Tsai Ing-wen (for sound financial reasons) cut military pensions. Yellow – Sex, including honey traps. (A Chinese phrase for behavior perceived as degenerate, such as prostitution and pornography, is huangse wenhua , 黄色文化, translating as 'yellow culture.') The most notorious case is that of General Lo Hsien-che, former head of communications and electronic information at Taiwan's Army Command Headquarters. Lo had access to a US-Taiwan communication project called 'Po Sheng,' considered vital to Taiwan and US defense of the island in the event of Chinese attack. After confessing, Lo was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2011. These strategies can be combined. Lo's downfall was financial inducement, and he was tempted by a Chinese seductress. Lo is not the only one of flag rank. Nor have enlisted personnel have been spared from Chinese recruitment efforts. Given the relatively low pay the enlisted earn, Chinese recruiters have set up operations targeting pawn shops. Given the history of this problem Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Chen Kuan-ting has proposed amending national security legislation. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for intelligence personnel prior to employment. The Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Security Bureau's Special Service Command Center, have lost out because Taiwan lacks a unified system for issuing security clearances. Chen said that Article 14 should be amended to model Taiwan's framework on systems used in the US and Japan by mandating that the central government establish or designate a lead authority to develop a nationwide security clearance framework. The amended standards would apply to political appointees, civil servants and intelligence personnel throughout their service, enhancing overall national security precautions. In this manner, you get a holistic evaluation which includes criminal records, online activity, and social circles the applicant was a member. In addition, Institute for National Policy Research Deputy Director Kuo Yu-jen compared the amendment to Japan's recently passed Act on the Protection and Utilization of Critical Economic Security Information which took effect in May 2025. Given the surge of Chinese espionage cases, President William Lai Ching-te has announced reinstatement of a military court system and its judges, suspended since 2013. The military court system had been suspended in a controversial case involving Corporal Hung Chung-chiu. At the time, the military court system was transferred to the local courts. After a period of years, the judges were deemed to not understand the negative military ramifications. Therefore, the cases involving espionage were all moved into the High Court. President Lai defended the reinstatement of military judges and other measures to stem Chinese infiltration, citing the rising number of cases of Taiwanese involved in forming treasonous organizations to help Chinese armed forces build up offenses against Taiwan. The Code of Court Martial Procedure was revised to ameliorate the harmful influences left over from military trials during the period of authoritarianism. Active-duty military officers who commit offenses listed in Part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Armed forces, such as offenses against allegiance to the nation, would face military trial. Crimes listed in Part 3 of the code would be handled by the judiciary. On March 13, 2025, President Lai Ching-te convened a high-level national security meeting, after which he introduced 17 major strategies to respond to five major national security threats Taiwan now faces: China's threat to national sovereignty; threats from infiltration and espionage activities targeting the military; threats aimed at obscuring the national identity of the people of Taiwan; threats from united front infiltration into Taiwan society through cross-strait exchanges; threats from using 'integrated development' to attract Taiwanese businesspeople and youth. One policy change that Lai did not order but should have is that there are certain categories of espionage that are deemed less serious than others, and for which fines will absolve the charges against the accused. This system should be done away with. Incarceration should replace it, no matter how long a term a convicted spy must serve. Bill Sharp ( ) is an associate of the Center of Chinese Studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and an adjunct senior fellow at Pacific Forum. Over a period of 23 years, he taught East Asian politics at Chaminade University of Honolulu, Hawaii Pacific University and the University of Hawaii, Manoa.