When DeepSeek’s reasoning model burst onto the scene last year and put Chinese artificial intelligence on the global map, the internet responded by probing its views on Taiwan or Tiananmen Square.
Unsurprisingly, the AI tool demurred or straight-up lied. But the gotcha moment obscured an important question. Would it matter to businesses deciding whether to use Chinese AI? Most companies aren’t turning to these systems because they need a reliable history of Chinese Communist Party flashpoints. With open-weight models, Silicon Valley quickly discovered that political biases could be reduced through post-training and fine-tuning.
Yet the suspicion persists. As Chinese companies expand overseas, their origins — sometimes fairly, sometimes not — tend to taint their trustworthiness scores. I’m often asked if these models are covert propaganda engines or data-harvesting Trojan horses for Beijing.
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