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By Tom O'Connor
Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
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CChina’s ambassador to the United States has called for partnership between Washington and Beijing on artificial intelligence to help prevent a potentially disastrous outcome for mankind.
The message comes in the wake of what Ambassador Xie Feng described as a “milestone” summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
The leaders discussed a wide range of issues, with AI making conspicuously frequent appearances in official readouts. It indicates the increased level of attention to a swiftly evolving technology that has elicited a growing chorus of warnings about the dangers associated with the lack of sufficient regulations.
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With some prominent AI researchers and industry leaders estimating a 10-20 percent chance of human extinction within the next few decades due to unchecked AI advances, Xie said it was incumbent upon the world’s two most powerful nations in the field to work together.
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“Facts have proven that open source and openness do not create insecurity; rather, technological decoupling, enclosure, and self-isolation are the real recipe for risk,” Xie told Newsweek during an exclusive, wide-ranging written interview.
“We hope the U.S. side will work with China in the same direction, help each other succeed with an open mind, and live up to our shared responsibility through cooperation, so as to jointly ensure that rather than heralding the dusk of humanity, new technologies such as AI will usher in the dawn of a new era.”
'Draw on Each Other's Strengths'
Following the leaders’ September summit, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a readout that dedicated a specific section to remarks on AI from Xi and summarized Trump’s position. Only the broader topics of strategic stability in relations and trade received the same level of prominence.
“During this visit, President Xi Jinping pointed out that China and the U.S. have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good, and to ensure that the development of AI is always under human control and serves the well-being of the people,” Xie said.
“We may have competition, but we may cooperate even more,” he added. “The right thing to do is to draw on each other’s strengths, not guard against each other.”
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AI was also mentioned in the White House readout, which stated that Trump and Xi agreed to instead use the term “super intelligence” in their discussions on the matter. The Trump administration also confirmed the establishment of a dialogue “to exchange views on risks and benefits related to SI.”
“I call it SI because it’s a much better name,” Trump said on September 26, the day after Xi’s departure from Washington. “It’s a much more accurate name because when you say the other, it means it’s fake. Artificial means it’s fake, and it’s not fake. It’s very strong intelligence.”
Yet Trump also emphasized that the U.S. “is not gonna be putting on brakes” for AI development through additional regulations. He compared predictions of the potential risks posed to humanity to a “hoax” not unlike climate change and allegations of Russian interference in his first election in 2016.
“What they wanna do is they wanna stop our progress because we’re leading China by a lot, and we’re gonna keep it that way,” Trump said, adding that he would “rather not integrate” with China.
“When you’re leading, you don’t open it up to each other,” Trump said. “We’re leading by at least a year and maybe a year and a half.”
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Preventing a New 'Arms Race'
The issue of AI and its regulation has emerged as a particularly contentious point of debate in Washington. But as Newsweek’s AI Policy Scorecard has shown, a significant number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers on both sides of the debate have come together around adopting tougher stances when it comes to national security and competition with Beijing in this field. Meanwhile, some senior Chinese officials, including State Security Minister Chen Yixin, have also recently highlighted potential threats posed by AI and U.S.-based models to the country and its ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Washington and Beijing currently head two separate AI- focused international coalitions: the U.S.-led Pax Silica launched in December, and the China-led World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, or WAICO, established in July.
But Xie said that recent developments also indicate that “AI can very well become a new frontier for China-U.S. cooperation, rather than a new arena for confrontation or conflict.”
He pointed out that the U.S. and China held their first AI dialogue in September, with a second round scheduled for November. The objective, he said, is “to exchange views on risks and benefits related to AI and jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI.”
The two countries have also agreed to establish “a bilateral communication channel for AI incidents,” Xie said.
This was especially crucial, Xie argued, as Chinese large AI models such as DeepSeek, Seedance and Kimi have evolved rapidly and gained popularity among developers worldwide, including in the U.S.
He demonstrated a real-world example of collaboration. “When an AI model escaped the sandbox in the U.S. in July, it was an open-weight model developed by a Chinese company that came to the rescue,” Xie said. The incident involved a rogue OpenAI agent hacking into Hugging Face—a major platform for hosting and sharing AI models—which turned to China’s Zhipu AI (rebranded internationally as Z.ai in July) to help contain the breach.
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A prior example of cooperation was disclosed in September, too. U.S. cybersecurity firm Calif used an AI tool to detect a vulnerability in popular Chinese messaging app WeChat. Calif then reported the findings to the Chinese service’s parent company, Tencent.
But as calls for intensifying competition on AI mount, Xie maintained that both Washington and Beijing could find ways to avoid a Cold War-style standoff.
“China always maintains that technology should be people-centered and developed for the positive and for good, so as to serve the progress of humanity,” Xie said. “As leading nations in artificial intelligence, China and the U.S. share a special responsibility.
“We need to jointly install guardrails and brakes, rather than engaging in an arms race or drawing down the iron curtain.”
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