Following several countries, including India, clamping restrictions on its officials using the newly-released Chinese AI tool DeepSeek, China on Thursday said such actions amounted to politicization of trade and tech issues and vowed to protect the interests of its firms.
China has always opposed the efforts to overstretch the notion of national security or politicise trade and technology issues, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun while responding to a question in a media briefing here about the fact that several countries have banned the use of DeepSeek or restricted its usage by officials in suspicion of data leaks.
"There have never been and there will never be any request made to any company or individual to gather or store data contrary to laws," said Guo, alluding to concerns about China's national intelligence law passed in 2017 which granted the Chinese state control over private companies.
"China has all along opposed moves to overstretch the concept of national security or politicise trade and tech issues. We will firmly protect the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies," Guo said.
India's Finance Ministry has directed its officers not to download or use AI tools and apps such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek in office computers and devices, saying they pose confidentiality risks to data and documents.
In a communication last month to all its departments, the ministry said AI tools and AI apps in office devices may be strictly avoided.
"It has been determined that AI tools and AI apps (such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek etc) in the office computers and devices pose risks for confidentiality of government data and documents," the Department of Expenditure under the ministry said in a note on January 29.
South Korea had blocked its government departments from accessing DeepSeek. The media reports also claimed that Italy, Australia, US and Japan blocked access to DeepSeek.
DeepSeek's latest AI offering has gained global attention for its low-cost model - at just USD 6 million against global average of billions of dollars. Further, DeepSeek's R1 used a fraction of compute power as compared to established AI models like ChatGPT.
DeepSeek was the new app that passed ChatGPT to become the number one free app on Apple's Appstore, while the US tech industry - that has long justifies injecting billions of dollars into AI investments- watched in sheer disbelief last week.
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