Hmm makes sense. I see what you mean from the position of say a general in US army tasked with this stuff: if someone says China can do X, his bosses are going to ask why America can't do X too. And therefore to force America into doing X, you just need reliable sounding misinformation to prove China doing X, and then moral arguments are swept aside.

However that aside, AI is very big in China right now, and they're using it for numerous applications with thousands of students going through Chinese universities being taught how to handle this stuff. While the same doesn't apply to niche interests like genetically enhanced humans (who is working on that, really?), something like AI with thousands of capable researchers and engineers is a different story.