AI is expected to be a central issue at the Xi-Trump summit later this September, but the scope for concessions on either side seems much less certain. US rhetoric around AI safety is often viewed sceptically in China as a means of holding back homegrown companies, and given the recent exchange of barbs between the US and China over AI distillation, the scope for agreement over the terms of market competition appears even narrower.
Huang Ping, a scholar at CUHK-Shenzhen, nevertheless lays out why it would be in China’s interests to seek a much broader AI agreement to secure its access to global markets and influence over standards. His reasoning is that whatever disagreements other countries may have with Washington, they tend to share its fundamental concerns about industrial competition from China. Recent events at the G20, where China alone opposed provisions on addressing “non-market policies” in global trade, amply illustrate the US’s ability to pull together a united front on suc…