AI superpower ambitions take centre stage as Trump and Xi meet

AI superpower ambitions move to the forefront as Trump and Xi meet

The US and China are locked in a contest to develop AI

"Whoever wins AI, WINS!"

US President Donald Trump has been outspoken about his AI goals, and about who he sees as the US’s chief competitor: China.

His Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, has not put it so bluntly - but he appears to share a similar outlook.

"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," says Rebecca Arcesati, from the Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Beyond the rhetoric, there is evidence of this: AI has been central to China’s technological ambitions for more than a decade, whether Xi highlights it publicly or not.

For Trump, overtaking China in AI supremacy matters more than any dangers the technology may pose to humans - risks he has called "a hoax"

.

China’s foreign ministry warned that " narratives of threat

" and confrontation obstruct global AI governance, and called for cooperation to make sure it benefits everyone.

That means when the two presidents meet on Thursday, few subjects will be more important than their AI ambitions - and what they say and decide will matter to the entire world.

There is no question that the US and China are global AI leaders, but who is ahead depends on how success is defined.

American companies dominate so-called frontier models, with the best-performing systems on most benchmarks coming from firms such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.

In February 2025, an AI model from China’s DeepSeek "briefly matched the top US model" and by March 2026, Anthropic’s leading model was ahead of the field "by just 2.7%", according to researchers at Stanford University

Part of the US lead comes from the huge amounts being poured into top AI companies, as frontier labs burn through vast sums to build the infrastructure needed to train new models.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman called for a coordinated slowdown in advanced AI development

The stock market is surging, and much of the US economy’s growth depends on the massive expansion - and expected profitability - of AI companies.

That may partly explain why President Trump sees AI as central to US success

Another constraint on China is the broad government restrictions on US companies that stop them from selling advanced microchips to Chinese firms - chips that are essential for building cutting-edge models.

Even with the chip restrictions, new AI models are appearing almost every month in both countries, and it is unclear what "winning" the AI race would actually mean, or whether there is any finish line at all.

Many companies are racing to build artificial general intelligence (AGI), a theoretical type of AI that can learn, reason and carry out a wide range of tasks at or above human level.

So far, China’s AI industry has concentrated not on frontier models but on what are known as open weight models - downloadable and adjustable in a way similar to open source software.

That differs from the strategy of many US firms, which mostly focus on proprietary models accessed through paid subscriptions or company platforms.

Chinese open weight models are being released quickly, with benchmarks showing the country’s best models trailing US rivals by only a few months.

Models such as Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 have gained popularity in China and abroad because they perform close to frontier models while remaining freely downloadable and adaptable.

Beijing’s priority is more about rolling out the technology across its economy, said China analyst Lizzi Lee from the Asia Society Policy Institute.

"AI isn't the moon landing," she said. "The US may lead at the frontier, while China could still gain enormous economic and geopolitical leverage by making capable AI cheap, open and ubiquitous."

AI also consumes a great deal of energy, and China is very well positioned on that front, Rebecca Arcesati told Tech Life on the BBC World Service.

"Chinese AI companies are able to access the electricity they need for a much lower cost and that really is an advantage," she said.

In robotics - an AI field that some believe will transform the world - China has become the world’s largest manufacturer of robots

, with more than two million operating in the country’s factories, the International Federation of Robotics estimated.

The country is also the world’s biggest producer of humanoid robots, accounting for more than nine-tenths of global shipments in the first half of the year, according to the independent policy institute Chatham House.

Chinese AI developers have shown "remarkable resilience and innovation" despite the shortage of advanced American chips, said analyst Lian Jye Su from tech research firm Omdia.

But US officials and AI companies have also accused Chinese developers of narrowing the gap by using distillation - a method that allows models to learn from more advanced platforms.

In response, China’s foreign ministry said AI development was "fuelled" by the country’s "vision of extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefit".

China and the US may be locked in intense competition, but their governments’ approaches to safety concerns are sharply different.

While some in the industry have recently warned that AI could pose an existential threat to humanity, Chinese researchers appear less focused on that and more concerned about possible misuse of the technology and cyber war.

Addressing concerns about AI, Trump has said the US already has enough rules in place and that the only guardrails AI needs are a "high IQ" president.

"We're leading now over China by a lot, and everyone else, and we're going to keep it that way," Trump said this week, adding that the US was not going to "stifle the growth of something that will be bigger than the industrial revolution".

Washington has put innovation first and tried to cut regulation in an effort to "keep American labs ahead", said information security officer Jayant Dave from cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies.

Beijing has adopted a different approach from the US hands-off model.

Xi has urged the country’s leaders to watch AI’s risks closely and ensure the technology is always "under human control".

"China has taken a relatively cautious and centrally-coordinated approach," introducing guides on data usage and algorithms before many other countries, helping to address many underlying concerns, Dave said.

The use of guidelines, although not legally binding, sets expectations while still leaving developers room to innovate, said National University of Singapore AI ethics lecturer Jonathan Sim.

Despite calls for international cooperation, it is still unclear how the AI superpowers intend to deal with the technology’s possible dangers - if they do at all.

The two countries have cooperated before on existential threats such as nuclear weapons, but that depended on a shared understanding of the danger, which is not the case with AI now, Dave said.

"Washington worries about capability escaping control. Beijing worries about capability threatening domestic stability," he added.

Trump has rejected calls for an industry-wide slowdown, saying it could let Chinese developers close the gap.

Before the Trump-Xi summit, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng discussed creating a notification mechanism for serious AI incidents.

Although Trump’s recent messaging on China has been "more antagonistic", the fact that AI is expected to be on the agenda was a "good start", said policy analyst Leia Wang from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

What we don't want, he added, was for an "unhealthy version of the race narrative to perpetuate", potentially worsening an already intense rivalry in AI.