China cautions top AI experts against U.S. travel amid global tech race

BEIJING – Chinese authorities are instructing the country’s top artificial intelligence entrepreneurs and researchers to avoid travel to the United States, due to concerns over the potential exposure of sensitive information regarding China’s technological advancements, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Authorities also fear that executives could be detained and used as a bargaining chip in US-China negotiations, the Journal said, drawing parallels to the detention of a Huawei executive in Canada at Washington’s request during the first Trump administration.

Executives at leading Chinese companies in AI and other strategically sensitive industries, such as robotics, are being discouraged from travelling to the US and its allies unless absolutely necessary, the Journal report said.

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

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng declined an invitation to attend an AI summit in Paris in February, according to the report. Another founder of a major Chinese AI startup cancelled a planned US trip last year, following instructions from Beijing, the Journal added.

The US and China are locked in a global AI race, with DeepSeek recently launching AI models that it claims rival or surpass US industry leaders like OpenAI and Google, at significantly lower cost.

In February, President Xi Jinping held a rare meeting with some of the biggest names in China’s technology sector, urging them to “show their talent” and be confident in the power of China’s model and market.