The Chinese Ministry of Commerce emphasized that model distillation is a standard industry practice used globally, including by US companies. Beijing believes that the US government's accusations of industrial-scale distillation by Chinese firms are baseless and lack legal grounds.
The Ministry stated that the US is politicizing a neutral technical process to maintain technological hegemony and compute monopoly. It claimed that US AI companies have used distillation on Chinese models, while the US government uses security agencies to interfere with normal commercial activities.
China has expressed its readiness to engage in professional discussions through the intergovernmental dialogue on AI agreed upon by the heads of state of both countries. However, Beijing warned that it will take countermeasures if the US implements actions to suppress Chinese AI companies under the pretext of stealing knowledge.