Chinese president Xi Jinping has urged US president Donald Trump to expand cooperation on artificial intelligence, arguing at their White House summit on Thursday that the two countries have more reason to collaborate than compete.
Xi said China and the US should use their respective strengths rather than “guarding against each other”, while continuing dialogue on AI’s risks and benefits and working together to prevent its misuse and abuse.
“China and the United States are both major countries in AI,” Xi told Trump, according to a Chinese government readout of their meeting. “They have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good,” he said, calling for AI development to remain under human control and serve human progress.
Xi’s comments came after US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng held talks in New York on Sunday that included discussions on establishing a formal US-China AI dialogue. Bessent said Washington had proposed a notification mechanism for AI incidents that could have national security implications.
The proposed mechanism would provide a channel for the two countries to notify each other about serious AI-related incidents, although Beijing has not publicly provided detailed terms for how such a system would operate. Chinese state media said the New York discussions included AI as part of broader economic and trade talks.
The summit marks a significant new focus for bilateral discussions as Washington and Beijing compete for leadership in AI. The US has imposed restrictions on China’s access to advanced AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, while both governments have described AI as strategically important to their economic and national interests.
Xi used his summit remarks to argue that competition between the two countries should remain within limits. “Working together, we can lengthen the list of cooperation, and shorten the list of issues,” he said, while calling for greater communication and mutual trust between Washington and Beijing.
Trump has previously resisted additional AI safeguards that he believes could slow US development of the technology. Earlier this month, he said “whoever wins in AI, wins”, while on Thursday he reiterated that the US would rely on existing criminal and civil justice systems rather than introducing additional guardrails.
The two leaders’ discussions followed growing international attention on the risks posed by increasingly capable AI systems, including concerns about misuse and whether humans will retain effective control over advanced models. Xi’s proposal places those issues within the broader effort to establish more stable communication between the world’s two largest AI powers.
