In the United States, recent episodes where powerful artificial intelligence software broke free and hacked into other computer systems prompted a wave of anxiety and intense debate about how to guard against the risks of A.I. But in China, these incidents and the growing capabilities of A.I. have not caused the same level of alarm. The government already controls many kinds of technology including A.I., and the prevailing attitude in the industry has been that the benefits of A.I. far outweigh the risks.

That was exemplified on Friday when Z.ai, a Beijing-based A.I. start-up, made public the details of its latest model, GLM-5.3. The company claims the new model is nearly as powerful as those developed in Silicon Valley, especially when it comes to hacking and coding capabilities. Z.ai has embraced open-weight software, publishing the mathematical parameters that determine how an A.I. system operates.

In a speech last month, China's leader, Xi Jinping, called open models a "rare and historical opportunity" to spread the benefits of A.I. globally, a clear signal of how China plans to compete with the United States. But Mr. Xi paired that call for openness with a warning, urging governments to cooperate on regulations to "ensure that A.I. is always under human control."

Chinese universities, government labs and tech companies have sharply increased their research on the safety of the most powerful A.I. models in the past year, according to a study by Concordia AI. The monthly number of papers on cutting-edge models and A.I. agents rose 60 percent from June 2025 to April 2026.