China-US launch AI dialogue. Chinese experts are cautiously optimistic.
What we know, what we don’t know, Chinese expert analysis, and what to watch out for next.
Following US President Trump’s visit to China, May 13–15, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced that both presidents had a “constructive exchange” on AI and agreed to establish an intergovernmental AI dialogue. US Treasury Secretary Bessent described upcoming talks on “AI protocols” as one of the three “most important achievements” of the meeting, alongside those on trade and investment.
Why does this matter? This agreement promises to end a two year freeze on direct US-China engagement on AI safety and could pave the way for more substantive breakthroughs. The last dialogue in May 2024 produced an agreement later that year on the importance of maintaining human control over nuclear weapons. The two sides have not formally discussed AI risks since.
Despite the milestone of restarting talks, many details on the scope of the agenda and format of participation remain unclear. Such details will, in part, determine whether the dialogue can deliver tangible outcomes.
What will the dialogue cover? The official Chinese announcement provided no details on scope or content. According to Bessent, talks would be “aimed at halting proliferation of powerful AI models … to non-state actors.” In an interview ahead of the summit, the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, XIE Feng (谢锋), signaled that the two sides should engage in a “race to the top” on safety and “check brakes before setting off” — suggesting room for a wider range of safety issues to be discussed.
How has China’s policy community framed US-China engagement on AI? China’s policy community appears open to dialogue on risks from advanced AI. Former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs FU Ying (傅莹) urged cooperation on catastrophic risks from AI at the Munich Security Conference in February. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, ZHAO Hai (赵海), Director of the International Politics Program of the National Institute for Global Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), directly called for a revival of the Track 1 dialogue on AI. Right before the summit, the official newspaper People’s Daily flagged “increasingly apparent” AI safety risks as a shared challenge for China and the US, alongside climate change.
Here are Chinese expert views published around Trump’s China visit. These views do not reflect official government policy, but they help shape the domestic debate:
XIAO Qian (肖茜), deputy director of Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy (CISS) (May 12): Xiao argues the “AI race” narrative is deeply problematic, because it obscures the interconnected nature of AI development, causes incentives to be misaligned with safety, and amplifies mistrust. She stresses that the most pressing AI risks transcend national borders, citing the extension of attack capabilities to non-state actors in dual-use domains like cyber- and bio-security. She also warns that malfunctioning AI systems could be misread as deliberate attacks. Calling a “sweeping cooperation framework” between the US and China “unrealistic,” she urges both sides to focus on “narrow, issue-specific areas where interests overlap and risks are clearly shared”—for example, technical exchanges on AI safety evaluation, joint or parallel scenario exercises on AI-related risks, dialogue on terminology and risk frameworks, and communication mechanisms for AI-related incidents.
SUN Chenghao (孙成昊) also from Tsinghua CISS (May 11, May 12): Sun proposes building on the existing US-China consensus on human control over nuclear weapons in two ways: horizontally, expanding it to other nuclear powers (including UK, France, Russia) and bringing it into UN and multilateral frameworks; and vertically, by deepening cooperation through more detailed, operational risk-assessment and control frameworks. China and the US agreeing mutually acceptable “red lines” will be key, Sun said, given that a total ban on AI in nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems is unrealistic. He also calls for cooperation on non-military issues, including assessing cross-border AI risks (like loss of control over AI agents, terrorist misuse, or deepfakes) managing AI’s economic and social impacts (like employment), using AI for global public goods (like climate change and public health), and addressing ethical and legal challenges.
CAI Cuihong (蔡翠红), deputy director of the Center for Global AI Innovative Governance (CGAIG) at Fudan University (May 14): Cai observes a paradox in China-US AI competition: the harder each side seeks security through technological advantage, the more insecurity both may create — unless they adopt shared guardrails. She argues cooperation must rest on three principles. First, reciprocity: mutual exchange on safety-incident reporting, model-evaluation methods, red-teaming, deepfake detection, and content provenance—though China would not accept “being folded passively into risk-assessment, technology-review or compliance frameworks defined unilaterally by the US.” Second, bounded scope: focused on high-risk issues like cyberattacks, AI-enabled fraud, loss of control in autonomous systems, critical-infrastructure protection, AI-related red lines in nuclear command, and mechanisms for incident reporting, crisis communication, and early warning. She cautions that “AI security should not become an all-purpose justification for securitizing civilian AI, open-source models, cloud services, scientific exchange, or talent mobility.” Third, openness: global AI governance cannot become a closed club of a few technological powers and must include the Global South.
China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) (May 13): This essay from one of China’s oldest and most respected foreign policy think tanks lays out a vision for China and the US to coexist in a time of “changes unseen in a century.” It raises AI as an area where the two countries need to build “constructive strategic stability.” It argues that advances in AI, quantum computing, blockchain, and biotechnology are bringing about both new development opportunities and new categories of risk. On AI specifically, it cites the International AI Safety Report to argue that general-purpose AI capabilities are advancing rapidly and that managing their risks has become a global issue, pointing to the Mythos model as a case in point. The authors warn that loss of control over AI could trigger security problems across multiple domains—nuclear, biological, information, financial, and social—and contend that only China and the US have the capacity, resources, and convening power to drive the international community toward an effective governance framework.
What’s next? Bessent indicated that talks could start “within the next four to eight weeks,” though this timeline has not been officially confirmed by the Chinese side. The two heads of state might meet up to three more times this year, with China having confirmed a visit by President Xi to the US this fall. Those meetings could provide further opportunities for AI-related discussions. Much is still unknown at this point; we will track any further developments in future newsletters.