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He loves to return from a trip like this, waving a check, or at least the promise of a check.

What does America want from China?

And what can it actually get?

The stakes seem high when Donald Trump visits Xi Jinping in the first of four expected meetings in 2026.

The coming six months of diplomacy could shape ties between America and China for years to come.

There are lots of issues where the two countries could and frankly should be able to work together.

But we're going to pick three on this week's podcast, Taiwan, trade and AI, in particular AI safety.

The Biden administration was very keen to talk to the Chinese government about AI safety.

And I think the Trump administration may be a bit more open to that now after they all got quite freaked out by the semi-release of Mythos, the newest model from Anthropic.

How does this AI safety question look from the Chinese side?

Yes, so China takes quite a different approach to artificial intelligence from the United States.

You know, it's less focused on artificial general intelligence.

It pays more attention to finding some practical uses for arguably some less powerful models.

It's focused on developing sort of cheaper models more efficiently.

It also has some sort of different concerns from the US relating to the effect on unemployment, which is a much more sensitive issue politically in China,

and also on the potential for some of these AI companies to really sort of gain insights into Chinese society and the Chinese economy that the Communist Party doesn't have.

The party really aspires to, you know, have total sort of control and total oversight of everything that's happening in China.

So they're very uncomfortable with the idea that these private actors might actually be able to develop these sort of insights that the party itself does not have.

That said, you know, that there are areas where I think China and the US do or should share many of the same concerns about the use of AI in combination with nuclear weapons,

about the potential for AI to be used by non-state actors to develop pathogens or for cyber attacks, cyber fraud.

I think they should have an interest in sharing and coordinating between regulators so that they can adopt best practice.

I think the problem is that there is such a lack of trust between the two sides.

And now artificial intelligence has really moved to the center of the geopolitical contest between China and the US.

So neither side really has an interest in accepting limitations on its own activities, nor does it trust the other side to observe those limitations, even if they could negotiate them.

The Biden administration did reach an agreement, right, with the Chinese, Jeremy, to both sides committed to the idea that humans would remain in control of the nuclear button, that AI would not.

That was, maybe that's a low bar, but they did at least establish that baseline understanding.

Yeah, a low bar, difficult to enforce, but arguably a foundation, you know, for broader discussions.

Moving on to Taiwan now, which is also likely to feature on the agenda at this week's summit, America's position on Taiwan has always been ambiguous.

Tell us a bit about the history of it leading up to this moment.

Relations between China, America and Taiwan are sort of underpinned to this day by these three joint communiques that were signed between China and the US in 72, 79 and 82.

And that one in 82 is really interesting because basically 79 China and the US established diplomatic relations and the US sort of breaks off diplomatic ties with the nationalist government and Taiwan.

But pretty soon after, the Chinese start to get a bit upset that the Americans haven't committed to end arms sales to Taiwan.

So they start putting pressure on the Reagan administration.

And Alexander Haig, who was Reagan's Secretary of State at the time, is actually quite in favor of the idea.

Reagan

agrees to this joint communique, which is really carefully worded, it does commit to gradually reducing arm sales to Taiwan,

but on the understanding that China takes a peaceful approach towards resolving the situation and the Taiwan Strait.

So China to this day sort of accuses the US of breaking its word by not reducing those arm sales, and the US would say, well, China is now threatening Taiwan militarily with increasing intensity.

So that justifies the continued arms sales.

But isn't there, Jeremy, hasn't there been at least some suggestion that Donald Trump has softened Ronald Reagan's commitment in this area, that he is in a sense now negotiating with Beijing over US arms sales to Taiwan?

Absolutely.

So that suggestion came up earlier this year, because if we go back to the Pusan summit in October, the two sides didn't really talk about Taiwan at all.

They just focused on trade.

And then in December, the White House approved a record arms package for Taiwan, about $11 billion worth.

And the Chinese were hugely upset about that.

So they have made it very clear that they want this issue back at the top of the agenda for this coming summit.

And Xi Jinping held a phone call with Donald Trump back in January, in which he personally made it clear that this is the most important issue in bilateral relations, and said the issue of arms sales had to be handled with extreme caution.

And after that, Trump made this extraordinary public statement where he basically sort of acknowledged that he was discussing future arms sales to Taiwan directly with Xi Jinping and was weighing up his options.

And shortly after that, it emerged that the White House was delaying a new package of arms sales, an even bigger one, $13 or $14 billion worth.

So the suggestion was that Trump was directly negotiating armed sales with Taiwan.

And that was something that the U.S.

specifically committed not to do in secret assurances that were sent to Taiwan back in 1982.

So the Taiwanese government and its supporters are extremely upset about that.

Jeremy, one of the proposals in advance of this summit is the creation of a board of trade, which sounds like a very Donald Trump branded solution to a problem, to manage trade between the US and China.

Would that make any difference to anything in practice?

I think it depends a lot on sort of what that actually means.

The US conception of it seems to be a mechanism for it to sort of distinguish between sort of more sensitive and less sensitive goods so that you could relax trade restrictions in some areas.

And I think the Chinese are interested in establishing a sort of regular dialogue to try and sort of work through some of the trade and other sort of economic issues.

I don't think the Chinese really mind too much if it's called a board of trade,

but the important thing will will be so not what it's called but how it actually works because um it would be a good thing in

theory to have some sort of mechanism for working level dialogue on on these kind of issues and get attempts to do that

in the past um have often failed because on the chinese side if you don't have sort of high level involvement um then the people down at the working level are not really sort of authorized to um

to make concessions and actually sort of negotiate.

So these often just become sort of talking shops in which things are sort of just kicked down the road.

So we'll have to see what the details on that are.

One thing we know about Donald Trump is that he loves to return from a trip like this and any kind of bilateral negotiation,

waiving a check or at least the promise of a check for investment in America or purchase of America goods, not necessarily structural underlying change, but at least evidence that he got something.

And I know in the US-China relationship, they always talk about the three B's of beef and soybeans and Boeing.

My question is, would Xi Jinping pay any kind of price domestically for giving Donald Trump a win like that?

Or is that kind of an easy way for both sides to satisfy Donald Trump's need and kind of punt on some of the bigger issues.

I don't think Xi Jinping sort of personally would pay much of a price.

You know, his political control is so absolute at the moment.

We've just sort of seen that in his recent military purges.

But, you know, I think he's more concerned at the moment about sort of the economic price that that China might pay.

So he's not going to give anything away without getting something in return.

One of his big concerns at the moment is the state of the Chinese economy, which in spite of its massive exports, which are flooding, that is in some ways, it's a sign of weakness as well as strength.

It's about overcapacity in the Chinese system and a lack of sufficient domestic consumption, which they haven't managed to stimulate for many, many years.

So I think that's the reason that he would want something in return from the US for any of those potential purchases of beef, beans and Boeings.

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