Donald Trump's warm reception of Xi Jinping raises questions about whether engagement with China can resolve disputes over tariffs, fentanyl, critical minerals and cybersecurity.

What China's Vibe-Coding Capital Can Tell Us About the A.I. Boom Tech workers have flocked to Liangzhu, a small town outside Hangzhou, looking to escape China's corporate culture and build their future with A.I. In mid-May, days after Donald Trump visited Beijing, a Chinese tech founder named Levy invited me to an office party for his A.I. fortune-telling company. It's called FateTell, and it makes an app that, in the vein of traditional Chinese astrology, reads your, a chart that tracks the elemental forces associated with your birth date and time. According to his invitation, my governing element, fire, would counteract the water element that Levy carries in oversupply.) So I travelled from Beijing to FateTell's headquarters, situated on the edge of Hangzhou--one of China's tech hubs, home to Alibaba and the insurgent Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek --in a town called Liangzhu. Liangzhu means "beautiful waterland," and it more than earns the name--rivers, lakes, and marshes thread through the low hills at the town's edge. The town is hip, idyllic, contrarian, and increasingly known as an escape for workers burnt out by the grind of China's booming tech industry.

As Xi meets Trump, who's winning their trade war? Share As Xi meets Trump, who's winning their trade war? on social media Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to hold talks with United States President Donald Trump at the White House during his state visit - the first by a Chinese leader in more than a decade - as the world's two largest economies are locked in an ongoing tussle over trade and artificial intelligence. Trump is expected to welcome Xi on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews outside the US capital, Washington, DC, in a rare gesture for a high-stakes three-day visit by the Chinese leader. He ramped up tariffs on Chinese goods after returning to power in 2025, and has since imposed curbs on the sale of AI chips to Beijing as the two nations compete for supremacy in the AI race. The future of their fragile trade truce will be high on the agenda when the two leaders meet on Thursday.

As industry leaders urge a global slowdown in artificial intelligence development for the sake of humanity, the two superpowers driving the technology's rapid advancement have given no indication they intend to hit the brakes. The United States and China, which are locked in a fierce strategic rivalry, have each rebutted calls to slow the pace of AI development, even as industry executives and researchers stress the need for international cooperation to avoid exposing humans to catastrophic - or even existential - risks. Observers anticipated measures that, at best, would fall far short of the coordinated slowdown that many experts said is needed. "The two countries host nearly all frontier labs and most of the models people download," said Alvin Wang Graylin, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, describing agreed guardrails between the US and China as "close to a precondition" for safe AI. "A safety regime covering one side's models covers half the problem," Wang Graylin said. Hampering the prospects for US-China cooperation, analysts said, are mutual mistrust and divergent perceptions of the primary risks involved.

Chinese robots have quickly entered global public consciousness in recent years, appearing as background robo-dancers in pop concerts and as humanoid marathon and sprint runners outpacing elite athletes ( 1). Domestically, robots are deployed as traffic guides and restaurant service staff, while swarms of drones entertain audiences in urban light shows or deliver takeout to high-rises ( 2, 3). These public debuts serve to both normalize automation in everyday civilian life ( 4) while projecting international soft power. Behind the public spectacle lies a bold agenda for global economic dominance. In its geopolitical contest with the United States, Beijing sees robotics as the core engine to project power and dictate the future of global supply chains ( 5).

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AI and China experts warn Beijing's free open source AI models and knowledge distillation campaigns threaten U.S. tech supremacy as President Xi Jinping arrives in US.

In the expansive grasslands of Inner Mongolia, farmers are picking plump potatoes alongside new neighbours: huge, rectangular blocks that will fuel China's AI platforms. Ulanqab, with its steppes and volcanoes, is an unlikely digital frontier. For years, it has been China's official potato capital. But now its fields have also become construction sites for a slew of data centres, as Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping meet to discuss AI safety among other things. Hundreds of workers in yellow helmets carry heavy equipment into the building site as welding sparks fly off metal scaffolding.

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AI, Tariffs, Rare Minerals: What to Expect From Trump's Upcoming Summit With Xi Jinping Washington and Beijing have grown ever more linked in the AI boom, making hardware exports and technological restrictions hefty bargaining chips in negotiations. Of all the events in the United Nations General Assembly taking place this week, the most anticipated by far is the upcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping. Though the majority of the diplomatic activities are happening in New York, this face-to-face between the two leaders will take place at the White House. Trump is scheduled to personally welcome Xi at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, September 23--an unusual diplomatic gesture, as US presidents do not typically go to the airport to welcome foreign leaders. Ahead of that airport reunion, a US delegation led by Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and trade representative Jamieson Greer is meeting with He Lifeng, China's vice premier of the State Council, to set the agenda.