Chen Yixin (陈一新, born 1959) is a Chinese politician who has been Minister of State Security of the People's Republic of China since 30 October 2022, when the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress appointed him to succeed Chen Wenqing (Source: en.wikipedia.org; reuters.com). In September 2026 he published a signed article on the security risks of artificial intelligence in China Cyberspace, the journal of the Cyberspace Administration of China, which was widely reported as a statement of the Chinese security establishment's view of AI during the international debate over pacing frontier development.
| Office | Minister of State Security, People's Republic of China |
| In office | From 30 October 2022 |
| Predecessor | Chen Wenqing |
| Also | Secretary-General, Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission |
| Earlier posts | Deputy Party Secretary of Hubei province; Party Secretary of Wuhan |
Background
Before his appointment Chen served as deputy Party secretary of Hubei province and Party chief of Wuhan (Source: chinadaily.com.cn). He also serves as secretary-general of the Communist Party's Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (Source: en.wikipedia.org; interpret.csis.org).
China Cyberspace article on AI risks (September 2026)
Chen's article appeared on the social media account of China Cyberspace on Sunday, September 13, 2026 (Source: scmp.com; businessinsider.com). The original Chinese text has not been read here; the account below rests on English-language reporting and translation.
Risks identified
Business Insider's account lists six categories of risk. The first is to "regime security": Chen wrote that "various hostile forces and malicious individuals abuse generative AI technologies — such as deepfake audio and video, AI-generated images and text, and intelligent online armies — to produce political rumors at low cost and in large quantities," to "wage a war of public opinion and cognitive warfare," posing direct threats to China's political, institutional and ideological security. The other five are risks to critical infrastructure from highly efficient AI-enabled cyberattacks; large-scale leaks of critical national data, trade secrets and personal information; an imbalance in technological development caused by monopolies, closed systems and supply-chain fragmentation justified by national security; challenges to social governance and public order; and changes in the character of warfare as AI-enabled precision targeting confers battlefield advantage (Source: businessinsider.com). The South China Morning Post reported that he described AI as "a new arena for strategic rivalry among major powers," cited Anthropic's Claude Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.5-Cyber as models that could significantly lower the technical threshold and cost of cyberattacks, and wrote that "foreign intelligence agencies are heavily exploiting smart web crawlers, data mining and profiling technologies to harvest sensitive information" (Source: scmp.com). Reuters quoted him as writing that AI "fundamentally transforms the form of military struggle" (Source: reuters.com). China Daily reported his statement that more than 500 million people in China had used AI products as of June 2026 (Source: chinadailyhk.com).
Proposals
Chen called for China to "accelerate the construction of a security risk prevention and control system" and to promote the "healthy and orderly development" of AI through "high-efficiency governance" (Source: businessinsider.com). According to China Daily he called for closer coordination among government departments, stronger security reviews, and an AI security supervision platform to monitor risks and provide early warnings (Source: chinadailyhk.com). Internationally, he wrote that AI should be developed "with the wellbeing of all humanity as its guiding principle," that powers must "resolutely resist hegemonism, technological barriers, and exclusive blocs," and that a "fair and open international AI rules system" should be established (Source: businessinsider.com). Bloomberg reported that he warned that countries with an AI advantage may invoke national security to impose technology controls, "monopolize" industry standards and build closed-source ecosystems (Source: bloomberg.com). See Export Controls (AI).
Context
The article appeared the same weekend that Xi Jinping called at the BRICS summit in New Delhi for a "consensus-based global AI governance framework" (Source: businessinsider.com), and the day after the publication of Dario Amodei's essay calling for frontier developers to pace AI development. The Chinese foreign ministry rejected the pacing framing, while Chen's article addressed AI risk domestically and criticised export-control and standards-setting behaviour by leading states (We Must Pace the Frontier (Amodei, September 2026)). See US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics.
Relationships
- related: Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) — publisher of China Cyberspace
- related: US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics — Chinese security-establishment view of military AI
- related: We Must Pace the Frontier (Amodei, September 2026) — Chinese responses to the pacing essay
- related: Xi Jinping
- related: Synthetic Media / Deepfakes — first of the risks he named
- related: Export Controls (AI) — his criticism of technology controls