Xi Backs AI Safety, Presses Taiwan and Iran With Trump — SkimNews
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- Xi Jinping pledged at the White House welcoming ceremony to work with Washington on AI governance, declaring that both nations have "the capability and responsibility" to manage AI for good and keep it under human control.
- Xi raised Taiwan in the closed-door talks, telling Trump China hopes the US will "oppose Taiwan independence" — even as the Trump administration keeps a proposed US$14 billion arms package for Taipei on hold since May, calling it a potential "negotiating chip."
- Xi also pushed Trump to restart US-Iran dialogue, backing a return to the June 17 Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding that extended a 60-day ceasefire but unraveled in July after Iran struck commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US-China trade truce will be extended by two months to January 10 — shorter than the six months some media had reported earlier in the week — while noting Beijing is meeting its 25-million-ton US soybean target but lagging on US$17 billion in other agricultural goods and rare-earth deliveries.
- Beijing and Washington agreed in Sunday's He Lifeng-Bessent talks in New York to launch a hotline for AI safety incident notifications, building on Xi's broader cooperation pledge at the summit.
- Xi announced plans to invite 100,000 young Americans to China over the next five years — double the 50,000-person San Francisco 2023 initiative, which China's Foreign Ministry says was met two and a half years ahead of schedule.
Why it matters: The summit produced an AI safety hotline and a two-month trade-truce extension, but Beijing's continued refusal to use its leverage over Tehran and Washington's ongoing freeze on a US$14 billion Taiwan arms package left the meeting's two biggest flashpoints untouched.
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