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Xiaofei Xu

China’s Ministry of Commerce has objected to Washington’s latest tariff on the country’s goods but signalled it will hold off on retaliation for now, noting the 12.5 per cent duty keeps the United States within the ceiling that the Trump administration promised in earlier talks.
Washington was manipulating the issue of forced labour, the ministry said in a statement on Monday, calling the Section 301 investigation and the subsequent tariffs “a textbook act of unilateralism and protectionism”.
It added that the US had previously promised Beijing that tariffs on Chinese goods would not exceed 20 per cent while reserving “the right to take all necessary measures”.
The US imposed fresh tariffs of 10 to 12.5 per cent on 60 trading partners on Thursday, including China and allies such as the EU, Japan and South Korea, following the Section 301 investigation.
Washington has another Section 301 investigation under way into excess industrial capacity, covering 16 economies including China and the European Union.
In a separate statement published on the same day, the commerce ministry also rejected US allegations that Chinese AI companies had “distilled” American models – a practice that uses the outputs of larger systems to train smaller ones.
The ministry said such claims had “no basis in fact and no grounding in law,” applied “a double standard in practice” and ignored the fact that some Chinese models were already leading in capabilities.
Beijing vowed it would take “all necessary measures” to defend its rights and interests.
Michael Kratsios, the White House science and technology adviser, said last week that Chinese start-up Moonshot AI had trained Kimi K3 by “distilling” Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5. He provided no evidence, and the narrow release window between the two models has sparked debate among artificial intelligence researchers about the technical feasibility of such a transfer.


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Beijing also rejects allegations that Chinese companies trained local AI models on American systems


Beijing also rejects allegations that Chinese companies trained local AI models on American systems.


China condemns US over new Section 301 tariffs – but holds off on retaliation

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beijing also rejects allegations that Chinese companies trained local AI models on American systems

Beijing also rejects allegations that Chinese companies trained local AI models on American systems