Xi Jinping arrives in Maryland on Wednesday for his first state visit to the US since 2015, and the subject of the trip is not trade or diplomacy so much as the technology that runs underneath both. The meeting between President Donald Trump and the Chinese leader is taking place amid deep distrust between the two countries, and AI is the thread that ties it together.
This is the second face-to-face meeting between Trump and Xi this year. The first was in Beijing in May. That summit saw talk of building “strategic stability” but produced no concrete outcomes. Trade, export controls and geopolitics remain unresolved issues between the two countries.
State Dinner Guest List
Thursday evening will see a state dinner at the White House, and it comes with a guest list that reads like a who’s who of the US tech industry. Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jensen Huang of Nvidia are all expected to attend.
The dinner is a sign of how central tech companies have become to US policy toward China. Their presence at the table means the conversation is likely to turn quickly to the question of AI safety, which has become the defining issue of the relationship.
Safety Mechanism Proposal
Scott Bessent, US treasury secretary, concluded talks with Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng on Sunday by proposing an AI safety mechanism between Washington and Beijing. The proposal appears to stop short of a major safety agreement.
Bessent’s proposal is a way for the two countries to coordinate on the safety of AI systems. It is a proposal, not a deal, and it is not clear whether either side has committed to anything beyond the proposal itself.
China’s Own Proposal
Tuesday’s People’s Daily ran an article calling for AI to be “a new frontier for China-US cooperation” and for use of the “intergovernmental dialogue mechanism on AI.” The article is a direct appeal to the US to treat AI as a field where cooperation is possible, rather than a source of conflict.
The article also cites UN Secretary General António Guterres, who urged the two countries to establish an AI dialogue like that between the US and Soviet Union during the cold war. Guterres said governments with the greatest AI capabilities have the greatest responsibilities to humanity, to establish channels for dialogue, transparency, trust and cooperation.
“Governments with the greatest AI capabilities have the greatest responsibilities to humanity, to establish channels for dialogue, transparency, trust and cooperation.”
The Fight Over Who Controls the Future
China has mandated labelling of AI-generated content, restricted children’s use of AI companions, and restricted chatbot speech. The US has long restricted China’s purchases of the most advanced semiconductors and banned the sale of Chinese humanoid robots.
Those moves are not just symbolic. They are attempts to shape the direction of AI development itself. China is trying to control the information that flows through its borders, while the US is trying to control the technology that China can build.
The two sides are not working toward the same goal. The US sees AI as a strategic asset that it must protect from Chinese competition. China sees AI as a strategic asset that it must develop on its own terms.
That mismatch is the real story here. The dinner on Thursday will be a photo opportunity. The technology it represents is the real battlefield.
Diplomats on the State of Play
Bonnie Glaser of the German Marshall Fund says expectations are very low. Glaser is a longtime observer of US-China relations, and her assessment is blunt: this meeting is unlikely to produce concrete results.
Amanda Hsiao of the Eurasia Group adds that China doesn’t see the threat the same way as the US. Hsiao’s point is that the two sides talk past each other because they are asking different questions. The US is asking how to keep China from catching up. China is asking how to build its own future.
Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies agrees that the relationship is not a G2. Kennedy is saying that is not happening.
The Arms Sales and Rare Earths Truce
Trump agreed in May to pause a $14bn US arms package to Taiwan. Trump calls future weapons sales a “very good negotiating chip.” The US is reportedly considering delaying further sales until after Apec and G20 summits later this year.
The trade truce struck in South Korea last year expires in November. That truce included a pause on tariffs and an agreement for Beijing to loosen rare earths export restrictions. The US sees the truce as leverage, according to Glaser. The US wants to keep the pressure on China to deliver on the rare earths agreement.
China’s exports have surged despite the trade war. It is on track for a $1tn trade surplus for the second year running.
What This Means for the Dinner
The dinner on Thursday will be a setting for AI safety discussion. The tech executives will be there, and the two leaders will have the chance to be photographed with them. But the real work will happen behind the scenes, in the discussions between Bessent and He Lifeng and in the conversations between the two leaders.
The distrust that brought AI to the center of this relationship is not going anywhere. The meeting will be held. The photo will be taken. The talk will happen.
Where the paper stands
The paper backs narrow rules against direct harm, such as forcing companies to disclose safety failures they hid, and is against broad rules that hand the market to the incumbents. The AI safety mechanism proposed by Bessent is a step in the right direction, though it remains a proposal without commitment from either side. The paper supports the idea of intergovernmental dialogue on AI safety, but only if it does not become a tool for locking in existing advantage. The dinner guest list shows how central tech companies have become to US policy toward China, and the paper wants their influence to push for openness, not consolidation.
The paper’s position is that the danger is big tech dominance, not the technology itself. When the biggest firms ask to be regulated, the paper asks who those rules would lock out: licensing regimes and compliance costs only giants can afford are a moat, not a safeguard. The US and China are each using AI regulation to try to control the other’s development, and the paper believes the answer is not to cede ground to the largest firms but to keep the market open to challenge.
The reader should watch for any move toward federal licensing of AI, which freezes today’s leaders in place and locks out whoever would have challenged them. The paper is equally against letting big companies hide their failures. The real battlefield is not the dinner table but the technology that runs underneath it.
Source material: “AI looms large over Trump-Xi meeting amid deep distrust between US and China,” The Guardian.
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