American AI firms want it both ways in limiting, profiting off China

OpenAI does not officially offer its services in mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau, yet it is hiring Mandarin-speaking developer experience engineers in Singapore. On May 14, the day US President Donald Trump met President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Anthropic published a policy paper arguing the United States and its allies must lock in a 12-to-24-month lead in frontier artificial intelligence (AI) by 2028 to avoid “authoritarian AI leadership”.

In the same quarter, Anthropic disclosed US$1.56 million in federal lobbying, a 333 per cent year-on-year increase, with “export controls” and “AI and national security” among the listed topics.

Taken together, these facts reveal an industry whose stated posture and revealed behaviour are moving in opposite directions. American AI companies are arguing for tighter controls on China while positioning themselves around China-adjacent markets those controls might restrict. They frame China as a strategic threat while hiring to build the language and developer ecosystems they cannot officially serve.