Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: The United States blames China for local data center opposition, details emerge about a California killing involving three Chinese immigrants, and Beijing issues new rules on exit bans and offshore trusts.
Explaining AI’s Popularity
As public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers rises across the United States, Silicon Valley elites and Republican politicians are accusing China of interference, including by paying local activists, based on scant evidence. Though Chinese propaganda might inflame these tensions, the unpopularity of data centers in the United States is entirely genuine.
The issue reflects how ideological and socially divisive AI debates have become in the United States. In China, however, the technology is popular, and both the government and the public are considerably cooler-headed about it. A poll published last November found that 87 percent of people in China say they trust AI, compared with 32 percent in the United States.
