Trump and Xi Jinping Meet Amid AI Ambitions

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to meet on Thursday, with AI ambitions taking centre stage. The two leaders have been locked in a race to develop AI. With the US and China vying for supremacy in the field.

According to Rebecca Arcesati, from the Mercator Institute for China Studies, "China very much sees it as a race, they very much think China should be the leading force in AI - they see AI as a power maximiser."

The US and China are global leaders in AI, but who is ahead depends on how success is measured. American companies lead on so-called frontier models. With the highest-performing systems on most benchmarks coming from firms such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.

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In February 2025, an AI model by China's DeepSeek "briefly matched the top US model" and as of March 2026, Anthropic's top model led the pack "by just 2.7%", according to researchers at Stanford University.

Chinese AI companies are able to access the electricity they need for a much lower cost and that really is an advantage, says Rebecca Arcesati. Chinese AI developers have shown "remarkable resilience and innovation" in spite of the shortage of advanced American chips.

Beijing's focus is more about deploying the technology across its economy, China analyst Lizzi Lee from the Asia Society Policy, Institute said.

The US has taken a different strategy to China's hands-off approach. Xi urged the country's leaders to keep a close eye on AI's risks and ensure the technology was always "under human control".

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The US has prioritised innovation and sought to reduce regulation in an effort to "keep American labs ahead", said information security officer Jayant Dave from cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies.

As the Trump-Xi summit approaches, a vital diplomatic effort is underway to establish a framework for addressing the growing risks of artificial intelligence. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng are working to create a notification mechanism for serious AI incidents.

A move that builds on their previous cooperation on nuclear disarmament. However, the AI threat landscape differs significantly from the existential risks they previously shared understanding of, highlighting the need for a new approach.