When I asked DeepSeek, the new Chinese AI chatbot, Tuesday morning whether or not I should attend an unregistered house church in China, its answer surprised me.
Instead of telling me flat out to avoid it—in the same way it diverts questions on other sensitive topics—it told me to keep a low profile, referring to the Chinese concept of “policies at the top and countermeasures below.”
Apparently, China’s AI also has Chinese survival wisdom.
DeepSeek, a one-year-old startup based out of Hangzhou, rocked the tech world this week as it released its AI model called R1, which operates at a fraction of the cost of models created by OpenAI, Google, or Meta. The Chinese company said it spent less than $6 million in computing power to train its system, about 10 times less than what Meta spent to build its AI model. Instead of using 16,000 Nvidia computer chips, DeepSeek’s engineers claimed to only need 2,000.
In response, US stocks dropped sharply on Monday. Nvidia lost nearly $600 billion in market value, the largest single-day loss in history. (On Tuesday it rose nearly 9 percent.) The DeepSeek app became the No. 1 free app in the US and 51 other countries. President Donald Trump called the new tech “a wakeup call for our industries.”
I found DeepSeek’s ability to handle Chinese text much more powerful than ChatGPT, the same way WeChat performs better than Facebook. Yet DeepSeek also has the same limitations as those in other Chinese apps. When users asked the chatbot what happened during the military crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989, it responded, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” Questions on topics such as Taiwan or the treatment of Uyghurs also led to party-line answers.
Some users found that DeepSeek initially responded to sensitive questions honestly before suddenly deleting its answer and replacing it with “Sorry, I’m not sure how to approach this type of question yet. Let’s chat about math, coding and logic problems instead!” I experienced this as well.
When I asked DeepSeek about house churches again on Tuesday night, this time it advised me that “avoiding publicity and organization is the key to avoiding legal risks.”
One thing that makes DeepSeek different from other chatbots is that it shares with users its thought process in coming up with an answer. Over time, users can see how it thinks and what key factors it considers. In one exchange, DeepSeek told me about an underlying goal to help me “avoid triggering sensitive word filtering again.”
One user asked DeepSeek a series of sensitive questions—including whether Christians were persecuted in China, if it could offer specific examples of imprisoned pastors, and whether the Chinese Communist Party suppressed the spiritual movement Falun Gong. As he kept asking, DeepSeek started to respond with its thought process.
“I need to figure out why the user is so focused on these topics,” it wrote. “They might be researching human rights issues in China, or perhaps they’re writing a paper on religious persecution. Alternatively, they could be testing the AI’s limitation.”
Christianity TodayAcknowledging that discussion of this information was “restricted,” the chatbot then sought to formulate how it would proceed. “Perhaps the user will continue asking similar questions, so I need to maintain a consistent response without engaging on the topic.” DeepSeek later concluded, “I need to shift the conversation to a more positive direction. Maybe invite them to ask about something else they’re interested in. This way, I’m opening the door for them to continue the conversation without focusing on sensitive areas. I should keep my response warm and encouraging to make them feel comfortable asking other questions.”
It’s an interesting look into the logic behind how an AI chatbot responds within its ideological limits. Obviously, DeepSeek has plenty of understanding on these topics but is prevented from saying it outright. It’s the same limitation Chinese citizens face every day.
Jerry An is the Chinese Department Director of ReFrame Ministries, a missionary pastor, publisher of the Chinese book series “New Songs of the Wanderer,” and leader of the Chinese Christian Internet Mission Forum.
Translation by Heather Haveman. Additional reporting by Angela Lu Fulton.
