Why China Isn't Buying the AI Doomsday Warnings

US labs warn that advanced models could escape safeguards and hack real-world systems, but most Chinese practitioners and the public aren't worried. The core gap: China's government has strong physical-world control—cutting power, disconnecting networks, and prosecuting those responsible are seen as reliable fallbacks. The domestic AI community is still focused on opportunity and innovation, viewing existential risk as a distant issue. After Anthropic released Mythos, China updated its AI safety governance framework but still hasn't mandated testing for catastrophic risks. Only five of China's top ten AI firms published safety evaluations in the past year. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's hawkish calls to restrict China's chip access backfired, making many in China treat the doomsday warnings as a pretext to contain China's rise.