New energy vehicles (NEVs) have been at the heart of EU-China trade tensions. The EU is attempting to thread the needle between three competing objectives: electrifying transport, strengthening domestic supply chains, and ensuring vehicle affordability. Meanwhile, Chinese NEV exports have continued to swell, especially amid weakening domestic demand and skyrocketing fuel prices from the Hormuz energy crisis. When the EU imposed tariffs on Chinese battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in 2024, hybrid vehicles were excluded, allowing Chinese automakers to expand their hybrid exports into the European market and creating a new challenge for the EU’s attempts to revitalize its incumbent auto sector amid growing competition from Chinese brands. This was one factor contributing to the relationship’s temperature rising from simmering to boiling in June of this year.

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On October 9, the EU and China surprised observers when they reached an initial agreement on managing their trade and economic relationship. The deal marks a significant step in the two sides’ efforts to contain trade tensions through negotiation rather than unilateral escalation. The breakthrough came just ahead of the European Council meeting on October 15-16 and in line with a previously agreed October deadline to achieve “tangible results.”

The agreement’s headline deliverable is a framework for managing the surge in Chinese hybrid vehicle exports to the European market. Under the emerging framework, the EU could pursue trade safeguards by imposing import quotas. These quotas on Chinese hybrid vehicle imports would be set above 2025 import levels, with room for annual growth—a result Beijing could present as a victory. At the same time, the quotas would remain well below projected 2026 levels, allowing Brussels to defend the deal domestically. China had pushed back against a previous European proposal for China to adopt voluntary export restraints on the grounds that such an arrangement would violate WTO rules; since the deal, the EU has notified the WTO that it has initiated a safeguard investigation into certain hybrid vehicles. Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) will continue to be subject to EU tariffs, with exporters having the option to propose price floors as an alternative to tariffs, per a January 2026 EU-China agreement.

Now that an interim deal has been reached, what will happen next?

The operational details of the deal will need to be worked out over the coming weeks and months. Key questions include the scope of the deal and whether it covers conventional hybrids, plug-in hybrids and extended-range vehicles; how quotas will be allocated among countries, companies and importers; how existing rules of origin will apply to vehicles assembled in third countries; and how imports exceeding the quotas would be handled. Any one of these technical issues could reignite political controversy.

The potential divergence in the two sides’ interests over the coming months is also not difficult to see. Brussels will be watching to determine whether Beijing’s other commitments in the deal translate into tangible commercial benefits. Will tariffs on products such as auto parts, olive oil and footwear be reduced? Will licensing for rare earths and permanent magnets be expedited? Will progress on market access for medical devices and agri-food products generate actual orders? If the European side sees only the management of Chinese auto exports without new market opportunities for European companies, calls for further pressure may grow louder. Conversely, if the EU makes no substantive improvements in its approach to dual-use items, makes no progress on BEV price undertakings, or fails to advance discussions on the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, China may be less willing to maintain restraint over the longer term.

Will the deal help stabilize EU-China relations?

In either case, the October agreement is unlikely to halt the EU’s tightening of its trade and industrial policies toward China, particularly the further development of what is often referred to as its trade and investment toolbox. The European Commission plans to present a new package in December, which is expected to include an instrument to diversify away from high-risk single suppliers. It has also announced plans for a “solidarity mechanism” to help member states or industries facing coercion or retaliation. The EU’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, which would impose strict conditions on certain foreign investments in strategic sectors, including Chinese clean tech investment, also remains under negotiation, though divisions over the bill may delay its progress and provide space for more Chinese investment deals to move ahead in the near term.

It therefore remains far from clear how much stability the October agreement will bring to EU-China trade and economic relations. The most plausible near-term trajectory is one of managed friction: periodic compromises that reduce the risk of a full-scale confrontation, alongside continued restrictions and recurring disputes. Domestic political dynamics in Brussels and the capitals of key member states, together with China’s evolving domestic political and economic outlook, will further shape the relationship as the two sides move into 2027.

What factors will shape the potential for progress in 2027?

Ultimately, the two sides’ ability to continue managing their differences will depend on how much leverage each believes it holds over the other. China’s strategic perceptions of Europe, Germany’s approach to China, and Berlin’s influence in Brussels are among the key factors to watch. Franco-German alignment on a proposed rapid-response trade tool bolstered European unity ahead of the deal, but divergences between the two countries’ approaches to China persist, especially among businesses.

For both the EU and China, January and March 2027 will be two important milestones. The two sides have agreed to hold a ministerial-level video conference in January 2027, followed by the third EU-China Trade and Investment Consultations (TIC) meeting in March. The January meeting could provide an opportunity to review implementation, with both sides assessing which commitments have been delivered and which individual cases remain stalled. The March meeting, meanwhile, could help shape discussions on whether the import quota model can be extended beyond automobiles to chemicals, machinery and other sensitive sectors.

Driven by domestic political considerations on both sides, the longstanding gap between public rhetoric and actual action in EU-China relations is also likely to persist, if not widen. Nevertheless, harsh rhetoric does not necessarily signal imminent confrontation. Domestic politics — including key elections in 2027, particularly in France — will continue to drive tough rhetoric on both sides, while economic realities in both Europe and China will create pressure to avoid unnecessary friction.

The extent to which both sides can manage frictions will also impact energy transition and climate outcomes. For Europe, the availability of affordable NEVs may impact the rate of vehicle electrification, including the region’s contribution to a proposed global target for electricity to account for 35% of final energy consumption by 2035 that the EU is championing politically. For China, preserving access to EU markets — whether through trade or investment — may be increasingly essential for the future viability of NEV companies as they struggle to maintain profitability amid intense competition. With clean tech sectors accounting for 11.4% of China’s GDP and over a third of GDP growth in 2025, whether NEV champions can preserve their profits may influence their political standing and China’s continued prioritization of the industry.

中国共产党第二十届中央委员会第五次全体会议公报

Communique of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

（2026年10月29日中国共产党第二十届中央委员会第五次全体会议通过）

Adopted at the fifth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on October 29, 2026

中国共产党第二十届中央委员会第五次全体会议，于2026年10月26日至29日在北京举行。

The 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China convened its fifth plenary session in Beijing from October 26 to 29, 2026.

出席这次全会的有，中央委员162人，候补中央委员117人。中央纪律检查委员会委员和有关方面负责同志列席会议。党的二十大代表中部分基层同志和专家学者也列席会议。

A total of 162 members and 117 alternate members of the Central Committee attended the session. Members of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and leading officials from relevant departments were present at the meeting in a non-voting capacity. Some of our primary-level colleagues and a number of experts and scholars, serving as delegates to the 20th National Party Congress, also attended the meeting in a non-voting capacity.

全会由中央政治局主持。中央委员会总书记习近平发表重要讲话。

The Political Bureau of the Central Committee presided over the meeting. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee, delivered an important address.

全会听取和讨论了习近平受中央政治局委托所作的工作报告，审议通过了《中共中央关于持之以恒推进全面从严治党若干重大问题的决定》。习近平就《决定（讨论稿）》向全会作了说明。

The Central Committee heard and discussed a report on the work of the Political Bureau, presented by Xi Jinping on behalf of the Political Bureau. They also deliberated and adopted the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Certain Major Issues concerning Persevering with Full and Rigorous Party Self-Governance. Xi Jinping delivered explanatory remarks on the draft Resolution.

全会充分肯定党的二十届四中全会以来中央政治局的工作。一致认为，中央政治局认真落实党的二十大和二十届历次全会精神，坚持稳中求进工作总基调，完整准确全面贯彻新发展理念，统筹推进“五位一体”总体布局，协调推进“四个全面”战略布局，统筹国内国际两个大局，统筹发展和安全，扎实推动经济高质量发展，推进社会主义民主法治建设，做好宣传思想文化工作，抓好民生保障和生态文明建设，维护国家安全和社会稳定，纵深推进全面从严治党，加强国防和军队现代化建设，做好港澳工作和对台工作，推进中国特色大国外交，“十四五”圆满收官，“十五五”开局良好，党和国家事业取得新进展新成效。开展树立和践行正确政绩观学习教育，隆重庆祝中国共产党成立105周年，进一步凝聚起全党全国各族人民团结奋进的强大力量。

At the session, the Central Committee fully affirmed the work of the Political Bureau since the fourth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee. It was unanimously agreed that the Political Bureau has secured progress in the following respects: earnestly implementing the guiding principles from the Party’s 20th National Congress and the plenary sessions of the 20th Central Committee; adhering to the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability; fully and faithfully applying the new development philosophy on all fronts; implementing the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan and the Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy in a coordinated way; balancing domestic and international imperatives; ensuring both development and security; delivering tangible results in high-quality economic development; advancing socialist democracy and the rule of law; improving public communication and cultural work; ensuring the people’s wellbeing and promoting ecological conservation; safeguarding national security and social stability; further strengthening full and rigorous Party self-governance; modernizing national defense and the armed forces; carrying out work related to Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan; and pursuing major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics. Thanks to these efforts, the 14th Five-Year Plan has been brought to a successful conclusion and the 15th Five-Year Plan period is off to a good start with new progress and results achieved in the cause of the Party and the country. It was also noted that, this year, we launched a study campaign on establishing and practicing the correct view of performance and celebrated the 105th anniversary of the Communist Party of China. These occasions have further harnessed the mighty force that stems from the entire Party and the whole nation forging ahead in unity.

全会回顾党100多年来的奋斗历程，指出中国共产党能够从胜利走向胜利，就在于胸怀共产主义远大理想，立志于中华民族千秋伟业，坚持为中国人民谋幸福、为中华民族谋复兴，在各个历史时期都高度重视管党治党，勇于坚持真理、修正错误，在依靠自身力量和人民支持解决自身问题中不断强大，成为党和人民事业的坚强领导核心。在革命、建设、改革中先后把党的建设作为伟大工程、新的伟大工程，党的十八大以来深入推进新时代党的建设新的伟大工程，找到“让人民来监督政府”和“自我革命”两个跳出治乱兴衰历史周期率的答案，这是中国共产党的独特创造，永载马克思主义政党建设史册。

Looking back on the Party’s journey since its founding, the Central Committee pointed out at the session that the key to the success of the Communist Party of China in winning one victory after another lies in its pursuit of the high ideal of communism, its dedication to achieving lasting greatness for the Chinese nation, and its commitment to seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation. During each historical period, the Party has attached great importance to its self-governance, had the courage to uphold truth and correct errors, and grown ever stronger by relying on its own efforts and the support of the people to resolve its own problems, ultimately emerging as the strong leadership core in the cause of the Party and the people. The Party advanced Party building as a great project and then a great new project in the periods of revolution, development, and reform, and it has made further progress in this regard in the new era since its 18th National Congress. During this course, the Party has found two answers to the question of how to escape the historical cycle of rise and fall: the people’s oversight over government and the Party’s self-reform. These are the unique discoveries of the Communist Party of China, and will forever stand out in the history of Marxist parties.

全会高度评价新时代全面从严治党取得的伟大成就。一致认为，以习近平同志为核心的党中央以巨大的政治勇气和强烈的责任担当，直面一度出现党的领导弱化虚化淡化、管党治党不严不实不力、党内一些问题触目惊心的严峻现实，坚定不移全面从严治党，刀刃向内、重典治乱，持续解决突出问题，从根本上扭转了管党治党宽松软状况，刹住了一些长期没有刹住的歪风，纠治了一些多年未除的顽瘴痼疾，消除了党、国家、军队内部存在的严重隐患，党在革命性锻造中更加坚强有力。新时代全面从严治党开辟了百年大党自我革命新境界，推动党和国家事业取得历史性成就、发生历史性变革，党和人民赢得强党强国的历史主动。

Participants at the session gave a highly positive assessment of the great achievements our Party has made in exercising full and rigorous self-governance in the new era. It was unanimously agreed that the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core demonstrated tremendous political courage and a strong sense of responsibility in confronting the grave situation marked by weak, hollow, and watered-down Party leadership, lax, superficial, and ineffective self-supervision and self-governance, as well as some startling problems within the Party. Staying firmly committed to full and rigorous Party self-governance, the Central Committee introduced the most stringent measures and dedicated continuous efforts to tackle all these prominent issues. As a result, the problem of lax and weak self-supervision and self-governance has been addressed at the root, unhealthy tendencies that had long gone unchecked have been curbed, deep-seated problems that had plagued the Party for years have been remedied, and serious dangers hidden within the Party, the state, and the military have been removed. The Party has thus grown stronger through revolutionary tempering. The endeavors to advance full and rigorous governance over the Party in the new era have broken new ground in the self-reform of our century-old Party and brought about historic achievements and transformations in the cause of the Party and the country. The Party and the people have thus seized the historic initiative in building a great party and a great country.

全会指出，在新时代管党治党、兴党强党伟大实践中，以习近平同志为核心的党中央围绕建设什么样的长期执政的马克思主义政党、怎样建设长期执政的马克思主义政党的重大时代课题，提出一系列新理念新思想新战略，形成习近平党建思想。这一思想丰富和发展了马克思主义建党学说，是坚持把马克思主义基本原理同中国具体实际相结合、同中华优秀传统文化相结合推进党的理论创新的重大成果，是党和人民实践经验和集体智慧的结晶，是习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想的重要组成部分，为深入推进新时代党的建设新的伟大工程提供了根本遵循和行动指南。

It was pointed out that as the Party endeavors to supervise, govern, develop, and strengthen itself in the new era, the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has put forward a series of new ideas, new thinking, and new strategies in response to the major questions of our times -- what kind of long-term governing Marxist party we should build and how we should build it, thereby giving birth to Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building. This thought has enriched and developed Marxist theory on party building, and it represents a major achievement in advancing the Party’s theoretical innovation through the integration of the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and its fine traditional culture. It stands as a crystallization of the practical experience and collective wisdom of the Party and the people. As an important component of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, it provides fundamental guidance and a road map for further advancing the great new project of Party building in the new era.

全会强调，全面从严治党具备许多有利条件，同时面临许多新情况新问题。随着世情国情党情发生深刻变化，党团结带领人民维护国家主权、安全、发展利益任务更加艰巨，党团结带领人民推动改革发展、维护社会和谐稳定任务更加艰巨，党保持先进性和纯洁性任务更加艰巨。这些对党在新形势下的执政能力、领导水平、队伍素质、拒腐防变带来重大挑战，党面临的“四大考验”和“四种危险”是长期的、复杂的、严峻的。全党必须从巩固党的长期执政地位、实现中华民族伟大复兴的战略高度，深刻认识持之以恒推进全面从严治党的重大意义，坚定信心，保持定力，以更高标准、更实举措把新时代全面从严治党宝贵经验坚持好、运用好，把党的建设面临的突出问题整治好、解决好，把管党治党形成的良好政治局面巩固好、发展好。

It was stressed that many favorable conditions are now in place for advancing full and rigorous Party self-governance, while we are also facing many new circumstances and new issues in this endeavor. Profound changes in global, national, and Party conditions have made the Party’s tasks of uniting and leading the people in safeguarding China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests, of uniting and leading the people in promoting reform and development and maintaining social harmony and stability, and of maintaining its advanced nature and integrity even more arduous. All this poses formidable challenges to the Party’s governance and leadership capacity, the quality of its membership, and its resistance against corruption and moral decline under the new circumstances. Moreover, the “four tests” and “four dangers” confronting our Party are still protracted, complicated, and serious. On this account, all of us in the Party must gain a deep understanding of the great significance of persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance from the strategic perspective of consolidating the Party’s long-term governing position and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. We must build firm confidence, maintain resolve, and adopt higher standards and more concrete measures to carry forward the valuable experience of full and rigorous Party self-governance in the new era, handle and resolve the prominent problems in Party building, and consolidate and develop the sound political situation formed through Party self-supervision and self-governance.

全会指出，持之以恒推进全面从严治党，必须坚持马克思列宁主义、毛泽东思想、邓小平理论、“三个代表”重要思想、科学发展观，全面贯彻习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想，深入学习贯彻习近平党建思想，围绕实现党的使命任务，落实新时代党的建设总要求，以党章为根本，坚持党的先锋队性质，坚持党的全面领导和党中央集中统一领导，着眼于提高党的长期执政能力、保持党的先进性和纯洁性、保持党同人民群众的血肉联系，坚持严的基调不动摇，健全全面从严治党体系，以党的政治建设为统领，全面推进党的各方面建设，充分激发全党积极性主动性创造性，不断实现党的自我净化、自我完善、自我革新、自我提高，持续增强党的政治领导力、思想引领力、群众组织力、社会号召力，确保党始终成为走在时代前列、人民衷心拥护、经得起各种风浪考验、朝气蓬勃的马克思主义执政党，始终成为中国特色社会主义事业的坚强领导核心。

It was stated that in persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance, we must uphold Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and thoroughly study and apply Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building. Dedicated to fulfilling the Party’s missions and tasks, we must act in line with the overall requirements for Party building in the new era, take the Party Constitution as our fundamental guide, maintain the Party’s vanguard nature, and uphold the overall leadership of the Party and the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee. We must focus on enhancing the Party’s capacity for long-term governance, preserving its advanced nature and integrity, and maintaining its close bond with the people. We must unwaveringly apply strict principles, improve the system of exercising full and rigorous Party self-governance, and take strengthening the Party politically as the overarching principle to advance Party building on all fronts. We must stimulate greater motivation, initiative, and creativity within the whole Party, continue working to purify, improve, renew, and excel ourselves, and constantly strengthen the Party’s capacity for providing political leadership, giving theoretical guidance, organizing the people, and inspiring society. In doing so, we will see that the Party always remains a vibrant Marxist governing party that stays at the forefront of the times, enjoys the wholehearted support of the people, and is able to withstand all tests, and that it always remains the strong leadership core of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

全会强调，持之以恒推进全面从严治党遵循的原则是：坚持服务使命任务，坚持以党的政治建设为统领，坚持全面从严，坚持问题导向，坚持守正创新，坚持以上率下，坚持依规治党。

At the session, the guiding principles for persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance were highlighted as follows: serving the Party’s missions and tasks; taking strengthening the Party politically as the overarching principle; exercising rigorous governance across the board; adopting a problem-oriented approach; upholding fundamental principles and breaking new ground; adhering to a top-down approach; and running the Party according to regulations.

全会对持之以恒推进全面从严治党作出系统部署，强调增强共产党人的党性，严格贯彻执行民主集中制，锻造堪当民族复兴重任的高素质干部队伍，建设上下贯通、执行有力的严密组织体系，驰而不息正风肃纪，坚定不移一体推进不敢腐不能腐不想腐，坚持制度治党、依规治党，完善党和国家监督体系，压紧压实管党治党责任。

Systematic plans for persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance were also made at the session with the emphasis on strengthening the Party spirit of Communists; strictly practicing democratic centralism; cultivating high-caliber officials capable of shouldering the mission of national rejuvenation; building a well-knit organizational system characterized by cross-level alignment and effective implementation; improving conduct and tightening discipline on an ongoing basis; taking firm and coordinated action against corruption; running the Party with systems and regulations; refining Party and state oversight systems; and ensuring all responsibilities of Party self-supervision and self-governance are fulfilled in earnest.

全会提出，增强党性是全面从严治党的根本性任务。必须推动全体党员、干部坚持党的性质和宗旨，增强党的意识、党员意识、先锋队意识，把加强党性修养作为终身课题，在坚定理想信念、铸牢对党忠诚、厚植为民情怀、坚持实事求是、纯正道德品质、保持清正廉洁等方面下功夫，做到忠诚干净担当，始终保持共产党人政治本色。要强化对党忠诚教育，坚持用党的创新理论凝心铸魂，用党的优良传统和中华优秀传统文化涵养党性，在实践中锤炼党性，加强党性鉴别。

It was pointed out that strengthening the Party spirit represents a fundamental task of our efforts to ensure full and rigorous Party self-governance. We must, therefore, encourage all Party members and officials to uphold the Party’s nature and purpose, raise Party consciousness, have a better understanding of their identity as Party members and the Party’s vanguard nature, and maintain a lifelong commitment to cultivating stronger Party spirit. We must also encourage them to devote efforts to strengthening ideals and convictions, forging strong loyalty to the Party, fostering deep affection for the people, always seeking truth from facts, building moral character, and preserving honesty and integrity. These efforts will help them to be loyal, upright, and responsible and always preserve the true political character of Communists. In this regard, measures will be taken to strengthen education on loyalty to the Party, build cohesion and inner strength with the Party’s latest theories, nurture the Party spirit with the Party’s good traditions and fine traditional Chinese culture, temper the Party spirit in practice, and enhance Party spirit appraisal.

全会提出，民主集中制是党的根本组织原则和领导制度，贯彻执行民主集中制是全面从严治党的内在要求。必须完善和落实民主集中制各项制度，充分发扬党内民主，有效实行正确的集中，更好发挥民主集中制的政治优势、组织优势、制度优势、工作优势。要坚持和加强党中央集中统一领导，提高党内民主质量，严格执行领导班子决策议事规则，规范“一把手”履职用权。

It was noted that democratic centralism is the Party’s fundamental organizational principle and leadership system, and its implementation is therefore an inherent requirement for exercising full and rigorous Party self-governance. We must improve and implement the institutions of democratic centralism, giving full play to intraparty democracy while effectively practicing correct centralism. This will allow us to better draw on the political, organizational, institutional, and working strengths of democratic centralism. In practice, measures will be taken to uphold and strengthen the Party Central Committee’s centralized, unified leadership, improve the efficacy of intraparty democracy, strictly implement deliberation rules and decision-making procedures for leadership teams, and regulate leadership team heads’ performance of duties and exercise of power.

全会提出，全面从严治党关键在从严治吏。必须贯彻新时代党的组织路线，严格干部教育培养、选拔任用、管理监督，建设一支政治过硬、本领高强、作风优良、纪律严明的高素质干部队伍。要坚持正确用人导向，精准科学选人用人，推动干部树立和践行正确政绩观，增强干部干事创业本领，提高培养选拔优秀年轻干部质量，加强干部管理监督，全方位培养、引进、用好人才。

It was stated that strict management of officials is the key to full and rigorous Party self-governance. We must implement the Party’s organizational line for the new era and apply stringent standards to the education, cultivation, selection, appointment, management, and oversight of officials. On this basis, we will build up the ranks of high-caliber officials with firm political commitment, outstanding professional competence, excellent work conduct, and strict discipline. Following sound guidelines in appointing officials, we should take targeted, well-designed measures to select and appoint officials, inspire officials to foster and act on the correct view of performance, enhance officials’ competence in fulfilling their duties and breaking new ground, improve the training and selection of outstanding young officials, and strengthen management and oversight of officials, with a view to promoting the training, recruitment, and utilization of talented people across the board.

全会提出，党的各级组织是全面从严治党的主体。必须体系化推进各层级各领域党组织建设，强化党组织政治功能和组织功能，确保贯彻落实党的路线方针政策和党中央决策部署上下协同、精准高效。要发挥中央和国家机关党组织表率作用，强化地方党委功能，统筹推进各领域基层党组织建设，突出抓好新兴领域党的建设，加强党员队伍建设，完善党的各级组织贯通机制。

It was stated that Party organizations at all levels play the principal role in exercising full and rigorous Party self-governance. It is therefore essential to systematically advance the development of Party organizations at all levels and in all sectors to strengthen their political and organizational functions. This will help ensure that the Party’s lines, principles, and policies, as well as the Party Central Committee’s decisions and plans are implemented through well-coordinated, targeted, and effective efforts. More specifically, we should give play to the exemplary role of Party organizations of central Party and state organs, bolster the functions of local Party committees, take coordinated steps to improve primary-level Party organizations across all sectors, promote Party building in emerging sectors, build a strong contingent of Party members, and refine mechanisms to ensure alignment across different levels of Party organizations.

全会提出，正风肃纪是全面从严治党的有力举措。必须坚持党性党风党纪一起抓、正风肃纪反腐相贯通，深化运用从抓作风入手推进全面从严治党经验，不断改进作风，用严明的纪律管党治党，以良好形象凝心聚力。要走好新时代党的群众路线，锲而不舍落实中央八项规定精神，推进作风建设常态化长效化，强化从严执纪，综合发挥纪律教育约束、保障激励作用。

It was pointed out that improving conduct and tightening discipline are effective measures to advance full and rigorous Party self-governance. We must work in concert to enhance Party spirit, improve Party conduct, and tighten Party discipline, and integrate conduct improvement and discipline enforcement with anti-corruption measures. Drawing on the experience gained in advancing full and rigorous Party self-governance through conduct improvement efforts, we will ensure steady improvements in our conduct, supervise and govern the Party with strict discipline, and pool support and strength with a positive image. In practice, we will follow the Party’s mass line in the new era, steadfastly implement the central Party leadership’s eight-point decision on improving work conduct, put in consistent and sustained efforts to improve conduct, ensure more rigorous discipline enforcement, and make full use of discipline as a guide, restraint, guarantee, and incentive.

全会提出，一体推进不敢腐不能腐不想腐是全面从严治党的重要方略和反腐败斗争的基本方针。必须牢记党除了工人阶级和最广大人民群众的利益没有自己特殊的利益、党同腐败水火不容，坚定走好中国特色反腐败之路，加强党中央对反腐败工作的集中统一领导，更加注重标本兼治、系统施治，坚持从严惩、精准治、有效防、一体抓，将反腐败斗争进行到底。要保持惩治腐败高压态势，加强对权力运行的制约和监督，夯实崇廉拒腐思想根基，增强一体推进不敢腐不能腐不想腐综合效能。

It was noted that taking integrated steps to ensure that officials do not have the audacity, opportunity, or desire to commit corruption is both an important strategy for full and rigorous Party self-governance and a fundamental guideline for our fight against corruption. The Party tolerates no corruption, as it has no special interests of its own besides the interests of the working class and the greatest possible majority of the people. Keeping this firmly in mind, we must steadfastly follow a distinctive Chinese path of anti-corruption and strengthen the Party Central Committee’s centralized, unified leadership over anti-corruption work. We must take systematic steps to address both symptoms and root causes of corruption and adopt a holistic approach that combines severe punishment, targeted remedy, and effective prevention, carrying this fight through to the end. While maintaining a tough stance against corruption, we should also strengthen checks on and oversight over the exercise of power, fortify the cultural-ethical foundations for championing integrity and disdaining corruption, and enhance coordinated efforts to prevent corruption by rooting out audacity, opportunity, and desire.

全会提出，加强党内法规制度建设是全面从严治党的长远之策、根本之策。必须坚持把党章作为全党的根本行为规范，深化党的建设制度改革，推动依法治国和依规治党有机统一，为持之以恒推进全面从严治党提供有力制度保障。要完善党内法规制度体系，增强制度执行力，大力破除潜规则。

It was noted that strengthening Party regulations and institutions represents a long-term, fundamental strategy for ensuring full and rigorous Party self-governance. We must uphold the Party Constitution as the fundamental code of conduct for all Party members, deepen institutional reforms related to Party building, and integrate law-based governance of the country and regulation-based self-governance of the Party, thus providing strong institutional support for persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance. For this purpose, stronger measures will be taken to improve the framework of Party regulations and institutions, ensure the enforcement of institutions, and eliminate hidden rules.

全会提出，持之以恒推进全面从严治党，必须进一步完善党和国家监督体系。要做实党委（党组）全面监督，完善纪检监察工作双重领导体制，推动党内监督同各方面监督深度融合、高效联动，发挥巡视综合监督利剑作用。

It was stated that persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance entails further improvement to Party and state oversight systems. With this in mind, we should ensure that Party committees (leading Party members groups) exercise general oversight, improve the dual leadership system for discipline inspection and supervision, pursue greater integration and efficient collaboration between intraparty oversight and other avenues of oversight, and give play to the role of inspections as a powerful tool of comprehensive oversight.

全会强调，持之以恒推进全面从严治党是全党的共同政治责任。必须扭住管党治党责任制“牛鼻子”，健全各负其责、统一协调的责任体系，优化责任落实考评机制，对管党治党不力、出现严重问题的严肃追责问责。

It was stressed that persevering with full and rigorous Party self-governance is the common political responsibility of all Party members. Attaching crucial importance to the responsibility system for Party self-supervision and self-governance, we will establish a robust, unified system where all sides perform their respective responsibilities in close collaboration. Furthermore, relevant performance assessment mechanisms will be improved, so that those who have failed to effectively carry out Party self-supervision and self-governance and caused serious problems in this regard are strictly held to account.

全会指出，深入学习贯彻全会精神是当前和今后一个时期全党的重大政治任务。要深入学习领会全会精神，加强组织领导，持续在解决突出问题上下功夫，推动《决定》各项部署落到实处。

It was pointed out that studying and implementing the guiding principles from this plenary session represent a major political task for the entire Party both at present and in the period to come. With this in mind, we should fully grasp the guiding principles from the session, strengthen organization and leadership, and make tenacious efforts to solve prominent problems, seeing that all arrangements of the Resolution are implemented to the letter.

全会强调，要做好岁末年初各项工作。坚持稳中求进工作总基调，完整准确全面贯彻新发展理念，加快构建新发展格局，用好用足宏观政策，深入挖掘内需潜力，进一步深化改革开放，推动经济持续向新向优向好发展，确保完成今年经济社会发展主要目标任务，实现“十五五”良好开局。统筹发展和安全，加强普惠性、基础性、兜底性民生建设，做好安全生产、防灾减灾救灾、食品药品安全和社会稳定工作。巩固拓展树立和践行正确政绩观学习教育成果，结合换届抓好新任职领导班子成员特别是“一把手”的政绩观培训，教育引导他们自觉坚持立党为公、为民造福、科学决策、真抓实干，努力为人民出政绩、以实干出政绩。

It was stressed that all aspects of our work agenda should be steadily advanced at the turn of the year. To fulfill this year’s main goals and tasks for economic and social development and secure a good start for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we will adhere to the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability; fully and faithfully apply the new development philosophy on all fronts; move faster to foster a new pattern of development; make full and proper use of macro policies; tap deeper into the potential of domestic demand; further deepen reform and opening up; and pursue sustained and high-quality economic growth driven by innovation. In an effort to ensure security while pursuing development, we will press ahead with initiatives to see that public services are inclusive, meet essential needs, and provide a cushion for the people most in need, and deliver better results in our work related to workplace safety, disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief, food and drug safety, as well as social stability. As part of our endeavors to consolidate and expand the progress made in the study campaign on establishing and practicing the correct view of performance, we will, in the midst of a new round of elections at all levels, step up training for new members of leadership teams, particularly their heads, on the view of performance to inspire and guide them to deliver for the people through hard work in line with the requirements of serving the public good, benefiting the people, making sound decisions, and taking solid, down-to-earth actions.

全会决定，中国共产党第二十一次全国代表大会于2027年下半年在北京召开。全会认为，党的二十一大是我们党在基本实现社会主义现代化的关键时期、向第二个百年奋斗目标进军新征程上召开的一次十分重要的代表大会，是党和国家政治生活中的一件大事。全党要团结带领全国各族人民万众一心、勠力进取，为基本实现社会主义现代化而共同奋斗，不断开创以中国式现代化全面推进强国建设、民族复兴伟业新局面，以实际行动迎接党的二十一大胜利召开。

The Central Committee decided at the session that the Party will convene its 21st National Congress in Beijing in the second half of 2027 and stated that this congress, which is to be held at a critical stage for basically realizing socialist modernization and on the new journey toward the Second Centenary Goal, will be a highly important meeting and an event of great political significance for both the Party and the country. The entire Party must unite and lead the Chinese people in forging ahead with one heart and one mind to achieve the goal of basically realizing socialist modernization and continue to break new ground in building a great country and advancing national rejuvenation on all fronts through Chinese modernization. With concrete actions, we will set the stage for the successful convening of this congress.

全会增选张升民为中央政治局委员。

At the session, Zhang Shengmin was elected member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.

全会按照党章规定，决定递补中央委员会候补委员卢东亮、包钢、邢善萍、曲莹璞、吕军、朱天舒、朱国贤、刘珺、刘捷、刘强为中央委员会委员。

It was decided that, in accordance with the Party Constitution, empty seats on the Central Committee were filled by alternate members Lu Dongliang, Bao Gang, Xing Shanping, Qu Yingpu, Lv Jun, Zhu Tianshu, Zhu Guoxian, Liu Jun, Liu Jie and Liu Qiang.

全会审议并通过了中共中央纪律检查委员会关于马兴瑞、蓝天立、刘建超、王莉霞、金壮龙、雷凡培、易会满、王祥喜、孙绍骋、李云泽、费东斌、吴胜华、余剑锋、袁洁、张忠阳、温刚、金东寒、方红卫严重违纪违法问题的审查报告，审议并通过了中共中央军事委员会关于张又侠、刘振立、王仁华、刘青松、黄铭、李桥铭、李伟、张红兵、汪海江、张林、王鹏、刘发庆、杨诚、钟绍军、赵晓哲、方永祥严重违纪违法问题的审查报告，确认中央政治局之前作出的给予马兴瑞、张又侠、刘振立、蓝天立、刘建超、王莉霞、金壮龙、雷凡培、易会满、王祥喜、孙绍骋、王仁华、刘青松、黄铭、李桥铭、李伟、张红兵、汪海江、张林、王鹏、刘发庆、杨诚、钟绍军、赵晓哲、费东斌、吴胜华、余剑锋、袁洁、张忠阳、温刚、金东寒、方红卫、方永祥开除党籍处分，给予李云泽撤销党内职务处分。

At the session, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s reports on the grave violations of discipline and the law involving Ma Xingrui, Lan Tianli, Liu Jianchao, Wang Lixia, Jin Zhuanglong, Lei Fanpei, Yi Huiman, Wang Xiangxi, Sun Shaocheng, Li Yunze, Fei Dongbin, Wu Shenghua, Yu Jianfeng, Yuan Jie, Zhang Zhongyang, Wen Gang, Jin Donghan and Fang Hongwei were deliberated and adopted. The Central Military Commission’s reports on the grave violations of discipline and the law involving Zhang Youxia, Liu Zhenli, Wang Renhua, Liu Qingsong, Huang Ming, Li Qiaoming, Li Wei, Zhang Hongbing, Wang Haijiang, Zhang Lin, Wang Peng, Liu Faqing, Yang Cheng, Zhong Shaojun, Zhao Xiaozhe and Fang Yongxiang were also deliberated and adopted. The Political Bureau’s previous decisions to expel Ma Xingrui, Zhang Youxia, Liu Zhenli, Lan Tianli, Liu Jianchao, Wang Lixia, Jin Zhuanglong, Lei Fanpei, Yi Huiman, Wang Xiangxi, Sun Shaocheng, Wang Renhua, Liu Qingsong, Huang Ming, Li Qiaoming, Li Wei, Zhang Hongbing, Wang Haijiang, Zhang Lin, Wang Peng, Liu Faqing, Yang Cheng, Zhong Shaojun, Zhao Xiaozhe, Fei Dongbin, Wu Shenghua, Yu Jianfeng, Yuan Jie, Zhang Zhongyang, Wen Gang, Jin Donghan, Fang Hongwei and Fang Yongxiang from the Party and to remove Li Yunze from his position within the Party were confirmed.

全会号召，全党更加紧密地团结在以习近平同志为核心的党中央周围，全面贯彻习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想，励精图治、奋发图强，持之以恒推进全面从严治党，不断开创新时代管党治党、兴党强党新局面，团结带领全国各族人民为全面建成社会主义现代化强国、以中国式现代化全面推进中华民族伟大复兴而不懈奋斗。

At the session, all Party members were called upon to rally more closely around the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core and fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era; forge ahead with dedication and enterprise, persevere with full and rigorous Party self-governance, and continually break new ground in supervising, governing, developing, and strengthening the Party; and unite and lead the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in a tireless effort to build China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and advance national rejuvenation on all fronts through Chinese modernization.

Source: Xinhua News Agency (Chinese original and English translation).

“The imperialists’ aggressive ambitions know no bounds. On June 25 of this year, the American imperialists launched a war of aggression against Korea. Their sinister plans are by no means limited to destroying the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They seek to annex Korea, invade China, dominate Asia, and conquer the entire world...The aggressors are destined for ultimate defeat, while final victory will belong to the peoples who uphold justice.”

— “Joint Declaration of the Democratic Parties,”《各民主党派联合宣言》, November 4, 1950

In early August 2026, I visited my wife’s family in Dandong, Liaoning Province. Not only was it nice to reconnect with my in-laws and extended family, it gave me a front-row seat to China’s narrative of the Korean War, and more broadly, Sino-DPRK relations. Dandong was one of several key battlegrounds during the war. It was the site of major U.S. air force bombings, and an entry point from which Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) crossed into North Korea. The Korean War (1950–1953) remains the only major war in which U.S. and Chinese armed forces fought each other directly and on a sustained, large scale. It’s a war that continues to resonate within the PLA, and the legacy that shapes China’s contemporary relations with the DPRK and the United States.

The following is a travelogue of my visit to Dandong – and an account of the Korean War through China’s eyes.

I. Dandong New City (丹东新城区国门湾) and China-North Korea Relations

My first stop was Dandong’s New City (丹东新城区国门湾). Developed within the Guomen Bay and centered on the New Yalu River Bridge (新鸭绿江大桥), the area was created as a modern hub for trade with North Korea, bringing together border-crossing facilities, logistics, commerce, industry, housing, and government services. It also supported ambitions for closer cross-border economic cooperation, including the nearby Hwanggumpyong economic zone in North Korea. However, the New City has been dormant for at least a decade due to inactivity on the DPRK side. That is about to change.

Dandong’s most famous landmark is the Sino–Korean Friendship Bridge (中朝友谊桥), whose history spans Japanese colonial rule, the Korean War, and decades of China–North Korea trade. It stands beside the older Yalu River Broken Bridge (鸭绿江断桥), which is a separate structure.

Built between 1937 and 1943 under Japanese rule, the Friendship Bridge connected northeast China and Korea, supplementing the original 1911 Yalu River bridge. During the Korean War, it carried Chinese troops and supplies into North Korea and was repeatedly bombed by American aircraft. Repairs kept the newer bridge operational, while the older crossing became today’s “Broken Bridge.”

For decades after the Korean War, the Friendship Bridge served as the principal road-and-rail crossing between China and North Korea, carrying a substantial share of bilateral trade.

Enter the New Yalu River Bridge, whose construction began in 2010 and whose main structure was completed in 2014. China’s stated goal in building the new bridge was to expand cross-border transport capacity and promote trade and exchanges with North Korea. The four-lane bridge would overcome the limitations of the aging Friendship Bridge, which permits only one-way road traffic and trucks weighing less than 20 tons. It was also intended to support broader economic cooperation, including the planned Hwanggumpyong economic zone and Dandong’s development as a border trade and logistics hub. However, for a variety of political and economic reasons on the DPRK side, the bridge remained dormant for over a decade.

According to the Associated Press, the bridge officially opened for commerce on October 15, 2026.

When I visited the bridge, what was remarkable was the significant amount of infrastructure built around it – a new customs building, rows of apartment complexes, parks and playgrounds. But no one was living there. It was virtually a ghost town. When juxtaposed with the towering new bridge, the largely empty development was a useful reminder of how much the Chinese government had invested in anticipation of trade and commerce with North Korea that had yet to materialize. Now that the bridge is open, China is hoping its bet will pay off.

As it happens, Kim Jong Un made a rare visit to Dandong on October 24, 2026, meeting with Wang Huning, Member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. After the visit, General Secretary Kim crossed the bridge in his motorcade back to North Korea.

Close to the bridge was another cultural relic - a retired PLA Navy frigate Dandong (丹东舰), hull number 543. It is listed as a Type 053H1 (Jianghu II-class) guided-missile frigate and displayed at Langtou Port (浪头港) as a museum ship and patriotic education attraction. However, it entered service in May 1985 and retired on May 19, 2021. So while it appeared to be billed as a Korean War attraction, it did not serve during the war, despite the “1950” branding visible at the entrance.

II. Hekou (河口) Village/Kuandian (宽甸)

The next stop was Hekou Village, in Kuandian County – an important gateway for China’s intervention in the Korean War. Located about 40 miles north of downtown Dandong, Hekou Village was on the Chinese side of the Yalu River, where the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) crossed into North Korea on October 19, 1950. It is therefore one of the initial crossing sites associated with China’s entry into the war.

Its significance extends beyond that first crossing. Hekou’s road bridge and nearby pontoon bridges provided routes for troops, vehicles, and supplies, supporting China’s ability to sustain operations in Korea. Successive formations passed through the area, making it an important link between China’s rear bases and the Korean battlefield.

Two major bridges destroyed during the war remain as “broken bridges” (断桥) on China’s side of the Yalu river: the Dandong Yalu River Broken Bridge and the Hekou Broken Bridge in Kuandian. Both were damaged beyond repair by U.S. bombing.

The surviving bridge ruins and commemorative displays connect He Kou village to China’s official narrative of “Resisting U.S. Aggression and Aiding Korea.”

Hekou is also associated with Mao Zedong’s son, Mao Anying, who crossed there and later served at the Volunteers’ headquarters. He died in a U.S. air attack on November 25, 1950.

These associations give the site symbolic importance as a place of wartime mobilization and sacrifice.

My family and I took a boat cruise on the Yalu, traversing the Chinese side of the China-DPRK border area. I got as close as an American can come to North Korea without stepping foot in the country, offering a rare view into life in the North Korean town of Chongsu (청수, 清水). Below are some pictures from the cruise.

After the cruise, I walked through a Korean War memorial in Hekou, featuring some military equipment used by the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) during and after the Korean War.

III. Memorial Hall of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea (抗美援朝纪念馆)

The final stop was the “Memorial Hall of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea” (抗美援朝纪念馆), otherwise known as the Korean War Museum.

Built in 1958 and renovated in 1993, it is the only museum in China that memorializes the Korean War. This was my third visit, and first since the 2014 renovation. As an American who grew up reading textbooks about the war, it’s hard to overstate the cognitive dissonance I felt reading China’s version of the war. The “Foreward” upon entering the museum underscores this narrative:

“The War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea is a war against aggression in which the Chinese people had no choice but to engage during the early years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), in order to uphold justice, oppose hegemonism and safeguard China’s national security. In June 1950, the Korean civil war broke out, and the Truman Administration of the United States (US) immediately carried out an armed intervention, launched an all-out war against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), crossed the 38th parallel blatantly and spread the war to the Yalu River, despite repeated warnings from the Chinese government. In October 1950, in response to the request of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) and the DPRK government and the will of the Chinese People, the CPC Central Committee and Chairman Mao Zedong made the strategic decision to assist the DPRK against the US aggression and safeguard China’s national security. The CPV was set up and sent to the battlefield in the DPRK to resist the aggressors together with the DPRK army and people. After two years and nine months of bloody struggle, the CPV with inferior armament won the great victory of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. The war stimulated the morale of China and its army who safeguarded the safety of both the DPRK and the PRC, changed the political landscape of Asia and even the world, helped establish an important position of China in Asian and international affairs.”

The exhibition emphasizes five interconnected themes: China’s defensive justification for intervention; the effectiveness of Chinese military operations against a technologically superior adversary; the importance of political mobilization and psychological warfare; the armistice as a Chinese strategic victory; and the war’s contribution to China’s subsequent diplomatic influence.

Although the exhibits contain important primary documents, battlefield photographs, maps, and artifacts, their presentation is explicitly political. They generally omit North Korea’s initial invasion of South Korea, minimize Soviet involvement except in selected military contexts, and present disputed claims, including allegations of American biological warfare, as established facts.

Historical Background and China’s Entry into the War (1949–1950)

The exhibition begins with the PRC’s establishment on October 1, 1949, emphasizing the country’s economic devastation after decades of warfare. Photographs of ruined factories and infrastructure illustrate the difficulties facing China’s new leadership.

Following Korea’s division at the 38th parallel after World War II, competing governments emerged in North and South Korea in 1948. The museum describes the outbreak of war on June 25, 1950, without clearly identifying North Korea as the initiating aggressor.

Instead, the narrative focuses on American intervention, particularly President Harry Truman’s June 27 decision to deploy military forces to Korea and the U.S. Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait. It portrays both developments as direct threats to Chinese sovereignty.

Additional exhibits document alleged American airstrikes on Chinese territory beginning August 27, 1950, particularly around Linjiang and Andong (present-day Dandong). Photographs of damaged buildings, destroyed infrastructure, and an American bomb are presented as evidence that the war was already threatening China’s homeland.

China’s intervention is framed as a reluctant but necessary decision. Documents include North Korean requests for military assistance, Zhou Enlai’s warnings against American advances, and Mao Zedong’s October 8 order establishing the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV). Chinese forces crossed the Yalu River on October 19, 1950.

Chinese Military Campaigns and Battlefield Strategy (1950–1953)

The exhibition celebrates China’s first five military campaigns, conducted between October 1950 and June 1951, as demonstrations of the CPV’s ability to overcome superior American firepower through mobility, surprise, manpower, and political determination.

The First Campaign (October 25–November 5, 1950), including the Battle of Unsan, receives particular attention. The museum claims that Chinese forces inflicted more than 15,000 enemy casualties while sustaining approximately 10,700 casualties themselves.

A comparison of U.S. and Chinese military equipment highlights the enormous technological disparity. The museum lists a U.S. infantry division as possessing 149 tanks and substantial artillery, while a Chinese army formation had virtually no comparable heavy equipment.

Captured American vehicles, flags, weapons, and military documents are displayed as evidence of Chinese battlefield success.

Transition to Positional Warfare

The Fourth Campaign (January–April 1951) is presented as a defensive struggle in which Chinese and North Korean forces delayed advancing United Nations Command (UNC) troops while reinforcements arrived.

After the Fifth Campaign, the war shifted toward positional defense and prolonged negotiations. Beginning in mid-1951, Chinese forces constructed extensive underground fortifications along a roughly 250-kilometer front.

The museum emphasizes the importance of tunnel systems, which allowed Chinese troops to survive bombardment, maintain defensive positions, and conduct counterattacks despite inferior firepower.

The Battle of Shangganling (Triangle Hill), fought from October to November 1952, is portrayed as a defining example of Chinese endurance and tunnel warfare.

Final Offensives

The exhibition culminates in the July 1953 Battle of Kumsong, which targeted South Korean forces shortly before the armistice.

It highlights the capture of a South Korean regimental headquarters by a small Chinese reconnaissance team led by Yang Yucai (杨育才), emphasizing deception, infiltration, and operational surprise. Yang is famous in Chinese military history for the operation known as “Surprise Raid on the White Tiger Regiment” (奇袭白虎团), during which he reportedly disguised himself as an American military adviser, while his 12 accompanying soldiers dressed as South Korean troops, and infiltrated South Korean positions. The unit attacked the regiment’s headquarters at Ich’ong-dong, inflicting substantial South Korean casualties and prisoners.

The attackers captured a tiger-emblazoned banner associated with the South Korean unit, which is now displayed at China’s Military Museum in Beijing.

The White Tiger case is one of several examples in the museum of how Chinese and North Korean forces used tactical surprise, operational ingenuity, and organizational to offset U.S. technological superiority.

Psychological Warfare and Prisoners of War

The museum devotes substantial attention to Chinese political warfare against American and other UNC personnel. It includes English-language propaganda leaflets criticizing American troop rotation policies, appealing to soldiers’ homesickness, exploiting racial tensions, and encouraging surrender.

One photograph depicts African American soldiers whom the museum claims surrendered following Chinese battlefield appeals. Other exhibits show improvised rafts carrying propaganda leaflets downstream toward enemy positions.

The exhibition also portrays the CPV as humane toward captured enemy soldiers while accusing the United States of mistreating Chinese and North Korean prisoners.

Prisoner repatriation became a major obstacle to the armistice. The UNC supported voluntary repatriation, whereas Beijing and Pyongyang initially demanded the return of all prisoners. Approximately 14,000 Chinese prisoners ultimately chose Taiwan rather than mainland China.

These exhibits reveal how the museum uses the prisoner-of-war issue to reinforce a moral contrast between Chinese and American conduct, while largely omitting abuses committed against UNC prisoners.

The Armistice, Chinese Withdrawal, and Postwar Diplomacy

The museum describes the July 27, 1953, armistice as a decisive Chinese victory because American-led forces failed to occupy North Korea or achieve a military settlement on their terms.

A map of the military demarcation line illustrates the territorial differences between American negotiating proposals and the final ceasefire boundary.

The exhibition also displays General Mark W. Clark’s memoir, From the Danube to the Yalu, highlighting his observation that he became the first American commander to sign an armistice without victory.

The museum interprets this statement as an acknowledgment of American defeat, although the armistice more accurately represented a military stalemate.

Chinese forces remained in North Korea after the armistice and completed their withdrawal on October 25, 1958.

Overall Takeaways

1. The Korean War occupies a foundational place in CCP historical legitimacy

The museum presents the war as the moment when the newly established PRC demonstrated its ability to resist a superpower. The conflict is portrayed as ending China’s historical vulnerability to foreign military pressure and restoring its international standing.

2. China frames military intervention as a defensive response to threats against national sovereignty

The exhibition repeatedly emphasizes American bombing of Chinese territory, the deployment of the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, and the UNC advance toward the Yalu River. These developments establish the museum’s central argument that China’s intervention was a strategic necessity rather than an act of expansion.

3. Political resolve is portrayed as a force multiplier against technologically superior adversaries

The museum’s comparisons of American and Chinese military equipment reinforce the argument that superior weapons do not necessarily determine military outcomes. Political mobilization, organizational cohesion, sacrifice, surprise, and asymmetric tactics are presented as decisive Chinese advantages.

4. Political warfare is treated as an integral component of military operations

The extensive propaganda exhibits demonstrate Chinese efforts to exploit American domestic divisions, military grievances, and personal anxieties. This reflects a longstanding Chinese military tradition of integrating psychological operations with conventional warfare.

5. China’s interpretation of victory is primarily strategic rather than territorial

Although the war ended in an armistice near the original dividing line, Beijing considers the survival of North Korea, the prevention of a U.S.-aligned state on its border, and the failure of American forces to defeat the Communist coalition to constitute a major victory.

6. The exhibition selectively presents historical evidence

The museum highlights American statements, captured military equipment, and Chinese battlefield achievements while downplaying or omitting North Korea’s initial invasion, Soviet involvement in planning and supporting the war, the heavy costs of Chinese intervention, and competing interpretations of POW repatriation.

The exhibition also presents allegations of American biological warfare as established fact, although these claims remain historically disputed.

7. The war is presented as a catalyst for China’s military modernization and diplomatic emergence

The museum links battlefield performance to subsequent improvements in the PLA, China’s increased international prestige, and Zhou Enlai’s participation in the 1954 Geneva Conference. Military power and diplomatic influence are portrayed as mutually reinforcing.

8. The exhibition offers insights into contemporary Chinese strategic thinking

Perhaps the most important broader lesson is the museum’s portrayal of the Korean War as a successful example of confronting a militarily superior United States when Beijing perceives fundamental security interests to be at stake.

The narrative emphasizes deterrence through resolve, asymmetric military operations, national mobilization, and the willingness to accept substantial costs to prevent a negative regional security outcome.

The significance extends beyond the Korean War itself. The exhibition reinforces enduring CCP beliefs about the relationship between national sovereignty, military power, political legitimacy, and resistance to external pressure. But its selective treatment of the historical record underscores the importance of distinguishing the museum’s official narrative from a comprehensive historical assessment of the conflict.

To reinforce this point, as mentioned earlier, on October 24, 2026, General Secretary Kim made a rare visit to Dandong and devoted a large portion of the visit to the Korean ​War memorial. Kim paid tribute to CPV soldiers who fought alongside North Korea, reportedly thanking the “martyrs of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army who supported North Korea with their lives and blood during a critical historical juncture, and expressed the North’s “sincere gratitude and eternal respect for the heroes of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.”

The Council will be co-chaired by Ambassador Chan Heng Chee, Global Co-Chair of Asia Society and Ambassador-at-Large at Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Gita Wirjawan, former Minister of Trade of Indonesia and Honorary Senior Fellow on China-Southeast Asia Relations at CCA.

“The establishment of this Council marks an important step in expanding CCA’s work on the increasingly consequential and multifaceted relationship between China and Southeast Asia,” said Jing Qian, Vice President of Asia Society and Co-Founder and Managing Director of CCA. “We are honored to have Ambassador Chan Heng Chee and Gita Wirjawan as Co-Chairs, joined by a distinguished group of members whose experience spans diplomacy, economics, academia, and business. Their collective insights will help guide our research priorities, deepen our understanding of regional developments, and strengthen CCA’s broader analysis of China’s role in the world.”

Founding members of the Advisory Council include Jing Qian, Vice President of Asia Society and Co-Founder and Managing Director of CCA; Craig Allen, former U.S. Ambassador to Brunei Darussalam and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at CCA; Kin Chan, Chief Investment Officer at Argyle Street Management; David Dapice, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Tufts University; Bert Hofman, former Director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore and Honorary Senior Fellow on Chinese Economy at CCA; Kevin Zongzhe Li, CCA Fellow; and Brian Wong, Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong and Non-Resident Honorary Fellow at CCA.

For more information, visit the Council’s page here.

中美达成八点成果共识

中华人民共和国外交部, 2026年9月26日

China and the United States Reach an Eight-Point Consensus

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, September 26, 2026

当地时间2026年9月23日至25日，中国国家主席习近平对美国进行国事访问。其间，两国元首就中美建设性战略稳定关系及重大国际地区问题深入交换意见，达成八点成果共识，包括：

From September 23 to 25, 2026, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to the United States. During the visit, the two heads of state exchanged in-depth views on building a constructive strategic stability relationship between China and the U.S. as well as major international and regional issues, and reached an eight-point consensus, including:

一、 双方同意构建“基于尊重、公平、对等的中美建设性战略稳定关系”。

1. Both sides agreed to build a “constructive strategic stability relationship between China and the United States based on respect, fairness, and reciprocity.”

二、 双方同意相互支持对方办好亚太经合组织（APEC）领导人非正式会议和二十国集团（G20）领导人峰会。两国元首有意出席对方主办的会议。

2. Both sides agreed to support each other in successfully hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meeting and the Group of Twenty (G20) Leaders’ Summit. The two heads of state intend to attend the meetings hosted by the other side.

三、 两国元首同意伊朗应履行不发展核武器的承诺，任何国家或机构都不得对国际水道征收通行费。

3. The two heads of state agreed that Iran should fulfill its commitment not to develop nuclear weapons, and that no country or institution should impose transit fees on international waterways.

四、 两国元首忆及中国和美国是二战盟友，并肩作战赢得战争胜利。

4. The two heads of state recalled that China and the United States were allies during World War II and fought side by side to secure victory.

五、 两国元首认可中美经贸磋商机制积极作用和双方经贸团队磋商成果，包括建立并推进贸易理事会等机制，达成“300亿美元”对等降税安排，延期吉隆坡经贸磋商成果等，并指示予以落实。

5. The two heads of state recognized the positive role of the China-U.S. economic and trade consultation mechanism and the outcomes of consultations between the two sides’ economic and trade teams, including establishing and advancing mechanisms such as the Trade Council, reaching an agreement on $30 billion in reciprocal tariff reductions, and the extension of the outcomes of the Kuala Lumpur economic and trade consultations, and instructed that these be implemented.

六、 中美禁毒执法部门合作取得可视化成果。近期，双方密切合作，联合破获多起涉新精神活性物质及前体化学品案件，在两国抓获数十名相关犯罪嫌疑人。

6. Cooperation between Chinese and U.S. counter-narcotics law enforcement agencies has produced tangible results. Recently, the two sides have worked closely together to jointly crack down on multiple cases involving new psychoactive substances and precursor chemicals, apprehending dozens of suspects in both countries.

七、 双方同意建立中美人工智能对话，交流人工智能相关风险和惠益。下次对话将于今年11月举行。双方同意建立人工智能事件的沟通渠道。

7. The two sides agreed to establish a China-U.S. AI Dialogue to exchange views on the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence. The next dialogue will be held in November of this year. The two sides also agreed to establish a communication channel for AI-related incidents.

八、 美方欢迎中方租借给美国亚特兰大动物园的一对大熊猫抵美。

8. The U.S. side welcomed the arrival of a pair of giant pandas loaned by China to the Atlanta Zoo.

此外，中美两军还同意尽快签署加强危机沟通与预防的谅解备忘录，继续合作搜寻在华美军失踪人员遗骸。

In addition, the two militaries agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding on strengthening crisis communication and prevention as soon as possible and to continue cooperating in the search for the remains of missing U.S. military personnel in China.

We are pleased to introduce China in Other Words, a new series from the Center for China Analysis that brings selected Chinese-language writing, ideas, and perspectives to readers across languages. We launch the series with a translation of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s remarks on President Xi Jinping’s September state visit to the United States, offering readers a firsthand look at Beijing’s account of the summit and its outcomes.

开辟大国相处正确之道 书写中美关系历史新篇——中共中央政治局委员、外交部长王毅谈习近平主席对美国进行国事访问

 新华社北京9月26日电

Charting the Right Course for Relations Between Major Powers and Writing a New Chapter in U.S.-China Relations—Wang Yi, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Discusses President Xi Jinping’s State Visit to the United States

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, Sept. 26

2026年9月23日至25日，国家主席习近平对美国进行国事访问。行程结束之际，中共中央政治局委员、外交部长王毅向随行记者介绍此访情况。

王毅说，9月，元首外交高潮迭起、精彩纷呈。在到访中亚、中东、南亚后，习近平主席远赴太平洋彼岸，开启举世瞩目的美国之行。这是习近平主席时隔11年再次对美国进行国事访问，实现两国元首半年内互访，创造了中美交往的历史。此访日程紧凑、内容丰富，习近平主席同特朗普总统在相互尊重的友好氛围中就事关中美关系和世界大势的战略性、全局性问题坦诚深入交换意见。美方给予习近平主席最高规格礼遇。特朗普总统夫妇亲赴机场迎接，军乐团高奏中美两国国歌，现场鸣放21响礼炮，各军种仪仗队整齐排列致敬，为访问拉开恢弘序幕。次日，特朗普总统在白宫为习近平主席举行盛大欢迎仪式，两国元首发表重要讲话，并肩检阅仪仗队和战机飞越白宫。当晚，特朗普总统夫妇以中国红装点白宫东厅，为习近平主席夫妇举行隆重欢迎国宴，美府院政要和各界名流齐聚一堂。这些精心设计的礼宾安排凸显美方对习近平主席的充分尊重和对中美关系的高度重视。

From September 23 to 25, 2026, President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to the United States. At the conclusion of the visit, Wang Yi, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, briefed the accompanying press corps on the visit.

Wang Yi said that September saw a series of high-profile and remarkable events in summit diplomacy. Following visits to Central Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia, President Xi Jinping traveled across the Pacific to embark on his highly anticipated visit to the United States. This marked President Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States in 11 years, marking the first time in six months that the heads of state of both countries had exchanged visits—a historic milestone in China-U.S. relations. The visit featured a packed and substantive schedule, during which President Xi Jinping and President Trump engaged in a candid and in-depth exchange of views on strategic and overarching issues concerning China-U.S. relations and global trends in an atmosphere of mutual respect and friendship. The U.S. side extended the highest honors to President Xi Jinping. President Trump and his wife personally went to the airport to welcome him. A military band played the national anthems of both China and the United States, a 21-gun salute was fired, and honor guards from all branches of the military stood in formation to pay their respects, setting a grand tone for the visit. The following day, President Trump held a grand welcome ceremony for President Xi at the White House. The two heads of state delivered important speeches and stood side by side to review the honor guard and watch fighter jets fly over the White House. That evening, President Trump and his wife adorned the East Room of the White House in “China Red” to host a grand state banquet for President Xi Jinping and his wife, attended by U.S. government officials, congressional leaders, and prominent figures from all walks of life. These meticulously planned protocol arrangements underscored the U.S. side’s profound respect for President Xi Jinping and the great importance it attaches to U.S.-China relations.

国内外媒体聚焦此次访问，纷纷以头版头条密集报道解读，普遍认为这是一次历史性访问，具有里程碑意义。在变乱交织的国际形势下，此访延续了两国元首北京会晤积极效应，引领中美建设性战略稳定关系取得新发展，释放了中美相向而行、和平共处、互利共赢的积极信号，造福两国、惠及世界。

Media outlets both at home and abroad focused on this visit, with front-page headlines and in-depth coverage widely describing it as a historic and landmark event. Against the backdrop of a turbulent international landscape, this visit built on the positive momentum from the two leaders’ meeting in Beijing, advanced constructive strategic stability between China and the United States, and sent a positive signal that the two countries are moving toward each other, coexisting peacefully, and pursuing mutual benefit and win-win outcomes—benefiting both nations and the world at large.

一、拓展中美关系新定位

王毅说，元首外交是中美关系的定盘星。特朗普总统再次就任以来，两国元首3次会晤、5次通话、多次书信往来，保持密切交往，形成了彼此尊重、真诚相待的相处模式，成为中美关系最宝贵的战略资产。在中美关系这艘大船前行的每一个关键时刻，都有元首外交领航定向。

1. Expanding the New Framework for U.S.-China Relations
Wang Yi stated that summit diplomacy serves as the guiding star for U.S.-China relations. Since President Trump’s second inauguration, the two heads of state have met three times, held five telephone conversations, and exchanged numerous letters, maintaining close communication and establishing a model of mutual respect and sincere engagement—which has become the most valuable strategic asset in U.S.-China relations. At every critical juncture as the “great ship” of U.S.-China relations has sailed forward, summit diplomacy has charted its course.

今年5月，特朗普总统访华期间，两国元首共同确认中美建设性战略稳定关系新定位，明确要朝着合作为主、竞争有度、分歧可控、和平可期的方向努力。新定位既反映了中美关系稳中有进的现实，也体现了双方对中美关系不断改善的期许，是迈向两国正确相处之道的重要一步。双方沿着两国元首指明的方向，积极推进对话合作，妥善处理分歧摩擦，实现了中美关系的总体稳定。

In May of this year, during President Trump’s visit to China, the two heads of state jointly affirmed a new positioning for a constructive and strategically stable U.S.-China relationship, making it clear that they would work toward a relationship characterized by cooperation as the mainstay, competition within reasonable bounds, manageable differences, and the prospect of peace. This new positioning not only reflects the reality of steady progress in U.S.-China relations but also embodies both sides’ aspirations for continuous improvement in these relations; it is an important step toward finding the right path for the two countries to coexist. Following the direction charted by the two heads of state, both sides have actively promoted dialogue and cooperation while properly managing differences and frictions, thereby achieving overall stability in U.S.-China relations.

此访重要的政治成果是习近平主席同特朗普总统进一步拓展了中美关系新定位的内涵，明确尊重、公平、对等的重要性，同意构建“基于尊重、公平、对等的中美建设性战略稳定关系”，为中美探索大国相处之道提供了更明确的战略指引。尊重就是尊重彼此主权和领土完整，尊重各自选择的社会制度和发展道路，尊重对方核心利益和重大关切。公平意味着开展互利合作，协商处理分歧，不搞你输我赢的零和博弈，不追求单方面的绝对优势。对等意味着两国主权平等，没有高低之分，不搞霸道霸凌，对等解决各自关切，平衡发展各领域合作。习近平主席指出，中美两个大国肩负着促进人类发展进步的历史重任，应当展现大国担当，顺应人民期盼和时代大势，探索一条大国正确相处的新路。实现中华民族伟大复兴和让美国再次伟大，完全可以并行不悖、相互成就、造福世界。

A key political outcome of this visit was that President Xi Jinping and President Trump further expanded the substance of the new positioning of U.S.-China relations, clarified the importance of respect, fairness, and reciprocity, and agreed to build “a constructive and stable U.S.-China strategic relationship based on respect, fairness, and reciprocity,” providing clearer strategic guidance for the two countries as they explore how major powers should coexist. Respect means respecting each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, respecting the social systems and development paths each has chosen, and respecting the other’s core interests and major concerns. Fairness means engaging in mutually beneficial cooperation, addressing differences through consultation, avoiding zero-sum games where one side wins and the other loses, and not pursuing unilateral absolute superiority.

Reciprocity means that the two countries are sovereign and equal, with no hierarchy between them; it means rejecting hegemony and bullying, addressing each other’s concerns on an equal footing, and developing cooperation in all fields in a balanced manner. President Xi Jinping pointed out that China and the United States, as two major powers, shoulder the historic responsibility of promoting human development and progress. They should demonstrate a sense of responsibility befitting major powers, respond to the aspirations of their peoples and the trends of the times, and explore a new path for major powers to coexist properly. The realization of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and “Making America Great Again” can certainly proceed in parallel without contradiction, complementing one another and bringing benefits to the world.

中美国情不同，存在分歧很正常，有些分歧还很尖锐，不少矛盾也很复杂。但在求同存异中妥处分歧和矛盾，是中美建设性战略稳定关系的应有之义。两国元首同意，发挥好政治外交渠道的协调作用。两国军队应保持常态化对话，经贸、财金、执法、人文等各部门有必要加强沟通，增信释疑、管控分歧、积累互信。习近平主席阐明了中方在台湾问题上的原则立场，强调中方坚定维护国家统一和领土完整，敦促美方坚持反对“台独”的正确立场，慎重处理台湾问题，为中美战略合作和两国关系发展排除干扰。

Given the differences between China and the United States, it is normal for differences to exist; some of these differences are quite sharp, and many of the contradictions are complex. However, properly addressing these differences and contradictions by seeking common ground while reserving differences is an essential part of building a constructive and stable strategic relationship between China and the United States. The two heads of state agreed to give full play to the coordinating role of political and diplomatic channels. The armed forces of both countries should maintain regular dialogue, and it is necessary for relevant departments in areas such as trade, finance, law enforcement, and people-to-people exchanges to strengthen communication, build confidence, dispel doubts, manage differences, and foster mutual trust. President Xi Jinping articulated China’s principled position on the Taiwan issue, emphasizing that China firmly upholds national unity and territorial integrity. He urged the U.S. to adhere to its correct stance against “Taiwan independence,” handle the Taiwan issue with prudence, and eliminate interference in China-U.S. strategic cooperation and the development of bilateral relations.

王毅说，正如习近平主席指出，“修昔底德陷阱”是可以跨越的。中美建设性战略稳定关系不是一句口号，而应该是相向而行的行动。只要切实体现尊重、公平、对等，中美一定能通过对话协商，共同走出一条两个不同文明、不同制度、不同道路国家在这个星球上长期和平共处的正确相处之道。

Wang Yi said that, as President Xi Jinping pointed out, the “Thucydides Trap” can be overcome. A constructive and strategically stable relationship between China and the United States is not merely a slogan, but should be reflected in actions taken in a spirit of mutual accommodation. As long as respect, fairness, and reciprocity are genuinely embodied, China and the United States will certainly be able, through dialogue and consultation, chart a path toward long-term peaceful coexistence between the two nations, with different civilizations, different systems, and different development paths.

二、开辟中美合作新空间

王毅说，作为世界前两大经济体，中美你中有我、我中有你是客观事实，合则两利、斗则俱伤是历史启示，相互成就、合作共赢是唯一正确选择。中美合作关乎两国人民福祉，也牵动世界政治经济格局。

2. Opening Up New Areas for China-U.S. Cooperation
Wang Yi said that as the world’s two largest economies, it is an objective fact that China and the United States are inextricably intertwined; history teaches us that cooperation benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both; and mutual support and win-win cooperation are the only correct choices. China-U.S. cooperation concerns the well-being of the peoples of both countries and also affects the global political and economic landscape.

访问前夕，双方经贸团队举行新一轮磋商，达成了一份新的联合安排，包括建立并推进贸易理事会和投资理事会、设立农业工作组、“300亿美元”对等降税、延期吉隆坡经贸磋商成果等，稳定了两国经贸关系，稳住了市场信心，对两国产业界、老百姓乃至全球经济都是利好。中美经贸关系历经曲折，今天的稳定局面来之不易。美方一些势力泛化国家安全概念，动辄把经贸问题政治化，打压在美中资企业，限制中国对美投资，制造市场准入障碍，鼓动“脱钩断链”，这不符合任何一方利益，只会让双方的利益交集越变越小。习近平主席指出，合作是双行道，中美经贸关系的稳定既需要拉长合作清单，也需要压缩问题清单。美方应当公平对待中国企业，秉持平等、尊重、互惠的精神，通过对话谈判找到解决问题的出路。双方要相向而行，坚持互利共赢导向，推动中美经贸关系持续稳定向好发展，更好造福两国人民。

On the eve of this visit, the economic and trade teams of both sides held a new round of consultations and reached a new joint arrangement. This includes establishing and advancing the Trade Council and the Investment Council, setting up an agricultural working group, implementing reciprocal tariff reductions totaling $30 billion, and extending the outcomes of the Kuala Lumpur economic and trade consultations. These measures have stabilized economic and trade relations between the two countries, bolstered market confidence, and brought benefits to the business communities and people of both nations, as well as to the global economy. U.S.-China economic and trade relations have been fraught with twists and turns, and the stability we see today has not come easily. Certain forces in the United States have overbroadened the concept of national security, routinely politicized economic and trade issues, suppressed Chinese enterprises operating in the U.S., restricted Chinese investment in the U.S., created barriers to market access, and incited “decoupling and supply chain disruption.” This does not serve the interests of either side and will only further diminish our shared interests. President Xi Jinping has pointed out that cooperation is a two-way street; the stability of China-U.S. economic and trade relations requires not only expanding the list of areas of cooperation but also shortening the list of issues. The U.S. side should treat Chinese enterprises fairly, uphold the spirit of equality, respect, and reciprocity, and find solutions to problems through dialogue and negotiations. Both sides must move toward each other, adhere to the principle of mutual benefit and win-win outcomes, and promote the sustained, stable, and positive development of China-U.S. economic and trade relations to better benefit the peoples of both countries.

中美执法合作有力维护了两国人民的生命财产安全，提升了两国关系发展的“安全系数”。芬太尼滥用给很多美国家庭带来难以弥合的创伤。尽管这一问题不是中国造成的，但中方从人道主义和中美关系大局出发，始终以最大善意，尽最大努力为美方应对芬太尼危机提供协助。北京会晤以来，中方再次新增列管易制毒化学品并加强出口监管，同美方联合破获多起涉毒案件，体现了中方的诚意。两国元首责成双方执法部门继续加强合作，共同打击跨国犯罪。

Law enforcement cooperation between China and the United States has effectively safeguarded the lives and property of the people of both countries and enhanced the “safety factor” in the development of bilateral relations. The abuse of fentanyl has inflicted irreparable trauma on many American families. Although this problem was not caused by China, China, guided by humanitarian considerations and the broader interests of China–U.S. relations, has consistently acted in the spirit of utmost goodwill and made every effort to assist the United States in addressing the fentanyl crisis. Since the Beijing meeting, China has once again added new precursor chemicals to its controlled substances list and strengthened export controls, and has worked with the United States to investigate multiple drug-related cases, demonstrating China’s sincerity. The two heads of state have instructed the law enforcement agencies of both sides to continue strengthening cooperation and jointly combat transnational crime.

王毅说，为者常成，行者常至。事实证明，中美能够通过合作办成一系列大事、好事。中美关系取得每一次进展，都给国际社会带来实实在在的获得感。双方各部门、各层级都要以钉钉子精神落实好两国元首达成的重要共识，不以善小而不为，不以恶小而为之，在务实合作中互利共赢，在良性竞争中彼此成就，共同开创中美关系更加美好的前景。

Wang Yi said, “Those who act will succeed; those who walk will reach their destination.” Facts have proven that China and the United States can accomplish a series of major and positive achievements through cooperation. Every step forward in China-U.S. relations brings tangible benefits to the international community. Relevant departments at all levels on both sides must implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state with the tenacity of driving a nail into place—never neglecting even the smallest act of goodwill, nor committing even the slightest wrongdoing—achieving mutual benefit and win-win outcomes through pragmatic cooperation, and helping each other succeed through healthy competition, so as to jointly create a brighter future for China-U.S. relations.

三、搭建中美友好新桥梁

王毅说，民心相通为中美关系发展提供了坚实力量和持久动能。正如习近平主席指出，中美关系希望在人民、基础在民间、未来在青年、活力在地方。“乒乓外交”叩开中美尘封多年的交往大门，“鼓岭缘”传承跨越世纪的友好情谊，艾奥瓦州见证地方合作的动人佳话，两国人民交往的涓滴细流，汇聚成滋养两国关系发展的源头活水。

3. Building New Bridges of Friendship Between China and the United States
Wang Yi said that people-to-people bonds provide solid strength and enduring momentum for the development of China-U.S. relations. As President Xi Jinping has pointed out, the hope for China-U.S. relations lies with the people, its foundation in civil society, its future in the youth, and its vitality at the local level. “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” opened the door to exchanges between China and the U.S. that had been closed for many years; the “Guling Connection” has carried forward a friendship that spans centuries; and the state of Iowa has witnessed touching stories of local cooperation. These small streams of people-to-people exchanges between the two nations have converged into a living spring that nourishes the development of bilateral relations.

此访期间，习近平主席多次提及中美民间友好的高光时刻：两国人民在二战中并肩作战，中国军民以数十万生命的代价营救数百名美国飞行员。中国治沙人殷玉珍与美国友人赛考斯跨越20余年在中国重逢，当年在沙漠中种下的树苗已成为森林。真挚的话语、感人的故事引发中美各界人士强烈共鸣。特朗普总统也在致辞中讲述了中美在二战中成为盟友，两国人民携手赢得二战胜利的历史经历，表示美中友谊跨越万里、绵延上百年，愿继续培育两国友好，为子孙后代带来持久繁荣和安全。“国之交在于民相亲”，民众之间的相知相亲最有温度、最有力量，足以打破隔阂、荡涤杂音，让宽广的太平洋连接彼此。

During this visit, President Xi Jinping repeatedly mentioned the highlights of people-to-people friendship between China and the United States: the two nations’ peoples fought side by side in World War II, and the Chinese military and civilians sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to rescue hundreds of American pilots. Yin Yuzhen, a Chinese desertification control worker, and her American friend, Saikos, reunited in China after more than 20 years; the saplings they planted in the desert back then have now grown into a forest. These heartfelt words and moving stories resonated deeply with people from all walks of life in both China and the United States. In his address, President Trump also recounted the historical experience of China and the United States becoming allies during World War II and the two nations’ peoples joining hands to secure victory. He noted that the friendship between the two countries spans vast distances and stretches back over a century, and expressed his desire to continue fostering bilateral friendship to bring lasting prosperity and security to future generations. “Friendship between nations lies in the closeness of their peoples.” Mutual understanding and affection among the people are the warmest and most powerful forces—sufficient to break down barriers, dispel discord, and let the vast Pacific Ocean connect us all.

为推动中美人文交流，习近平主席宣布了一系列新举措。在提前两年半完成“5年5万”倡议目标的基础上，习近平主席宣布，未来5年中方将邀请10万名美国青少年来华交流学习。从5万到10万，增长的不仅仅是数字，更是扩大青年交流、为中美友好积聚青春力量的行动。最受美国民众欢迎的好消息是大熊猫“平平”“福双”即将落户亚特兰大动物园。大熊猫是友谊的使者，深受美国民众喜爱，两国的熊猫情缘已跨越半个多世纪。“平平”“福双”的到来，将为中美友好再添佳话。“月季外交”是此访的另一个亮点。特朗普总统5月到访中南海时，对中国月季赞赏有加。几个月后，中国月季带着中国人民的美好祝福，漂洋过海来到美国白宫，成为两国友好新的象征。

To promote people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States, President Xi Jinping announced a series of new initiatives. Building on the achievement of the “50,000 in 5 Years” initiative—which was completed two and a half years ahead of schedule—President Xi Jinping announced that over the next five years, China will invite 100,000 American youth to visit China for exchanges and study. From 50,000 to 100,000—this is not merely a numerical increase, but a concrete step to expand youth exchanges and harness the youthful energy to foster friendship between China and the United States. The news most welcomed by the American public is that the giant pandas “Pingping” and “Fushuang” will soon call the Atlanta Zoo home. Giant pandas are ambassadors of friendship, deeply beloved by the American people, and the bond between our two nations through these pandas has spanned more than half a century. The arrival of “Pingping” and “Fushuang” will add another beautiful chapter to China-U.S. friendship. “Rose diplomacy” was another highlight of this visit. When President Trump visited Zhongnanhai in May, he spoke highly of Chinese roses. A few months later, Chinese roses—carrying the warm blessings of the Chinese people—traveled across the ocean to the White House, becoming a new symbol of friendship between the two nations.

值得一提的是，特朗普总统夫妇邀请习近平主席夫妇共同参观美国国家档案馆，与5月习近平主席邀请特朗普总统参访天坛异曲同工，体现了中美两个大国对彼此历史文化的理解和尊重。中美文化传统、社会制度不同，但差异并不必然导致对立，而是为交流互鉴提供了广阔空间。

温润亲和的夫人外交为此访注入柔性力量。彭丽媛教授陪同习近平主席访美，应特朗普总统夫人梅拉尼娅之邀共同参观国立亚洲艺术博物馆，一起欣赏美国青少年合唱《茉莉花》等中国歌曲，感受艺术交融与音乐共鸣，拉近了两国人民心灵的距离。

It is worth noting that President Trump and his wife invited President Xi Jinping and his wife to tour the National Archives of the United States together. This gesture, much like President Xi’s invitation to President Trump to visit the Temple of Heaven in May, reflects the mutual understanding and respect that these two major powers have for each other’s history and culture. Although China and the United States have different cultural traditions and social systems, these differences do not necessarily lead to confrontation; rather, they provide ample room for exchange and mutual learning.

The warm and approachable “first lady diplomacy” infused this visit with a gentle, unifying force. Professor Peng Liyuan, accompanying President Xi Jinping on his visit to the United States, accepted an invitation from First Lady Melania Trump to visit the National Museum of Asian Art together. Together, they enjoyed performances by an American youth choir singing Chinese songs such as “Jasmine Flower,” experiencing the fusion of art and the resonance of music, which brought the hearts of the two peoples closer together.

王毅表示，惟以心相交，方成其久远。中美关系继续前行，既需要元首层面的“握手”，也需要普通民众的“牵手”。我们将在两国元首战略引领下，持续为中美人文交流架桥铺路，为青年、教育、文化、旅游、体育等各领域交流合作拓宽渠道、提供动力，让两国人民的友谊之树向更深处扎根、向更高处生长。

Wang Yi stated, “Only by connecting hearts can we build a lasting relationship.” For U.S.-China relations to continue moving forward, we need not only a “handshake” at the head-of-state level but also a “hand-in-hand” connection among ordinary people. Under the strategic guidance of the two heads of state, we will continue to build bridges and pave the way for people-to-people exchanges between our two countries, broadening channels and providing impetus for exchanges and cooperation in various fields—including youth, education, culture, tourism, and sports—so that the tree of friendship between our two peoples can take deeper root and grow ever higher.

四、展现大国责任新担当

王毅说，面对变乱交织的国际形势，中美关系的世界意义更加凸显。无论是应对全球性挑战，还是推动热点问题降温，都离不开中美建设性互动。习近平主席指出，虽然中美合作不可能解决世界上所有问题，但没有两国合作，世界上很多问题都难以解决。特朗普总统表示，美中携手合作，将为世界未来数十年的和平与繁荣奠定坚实基础。此访期间，两国元首就共同关心的重大国际和地区问题深入交换意见，同意加强协调，为世界和平发展作出应有贡献。

4. Demonstrating New Responsibility as Major Powers
Wang Yi said that in the face of an international landscape marked by both change and turmoil, the global significance of U.S.-China relations has become even more prominent. Whether addressing global challenges or de-escalating hotspot issues, constructive interaction between China and the United States is indispensable. President Xi Jinping pointed out that while U.S.-China cooperation cannot solve all the world’s problems, many of them would be difficult to resolve without cooperation between the two countries. President Trump stated that cooperation between the United States and China will lay a solid foundation for the world’s peace and prosperity in the coming decades. During this visit, the two heads of state exchanged in-depth views on major international and regional issues of mutual concern and agreed to strengthen coordination to make due contributions to world peace and development.

海湾和中东局势持续紧张冲击全球能源安全、地缘格局和国际秩序。作为负责任大国，中方始终坚定做中东和平的建设者、稳定的促进者、发展的支持者。习近平主席先后提出一系列致力于中东和平稳定的倡议和主张，得到国际社会广泛认同和积极响应。此访期间，习近平主席强调各国的主权和安全都应得到尊重，鼓励各方坚持和平选择，支持美伊回归伊斯兰堡谅解备忘录，尽早重启对话谈判，最终达成包括核问题在内的全面协议。国际舆论高度评价中方客观公正立场，认为中方着眼问题根源，强调标本兼治，尊重各国主权，推动对话协商，为中东局势降温发挥着建设性作用，期待中方为更多热点问题的解决提供中国方案、中国智慧。

Ongoing tensions in the Gulf and the Middle East continue to impact global energy security, the geopolitical landscape, and the international order. As a responsible major power, China has always been a firm builder of peace, a promoter of stability, and a supporter of development in the Middle East. President Xi Jinping has successively put forward a series of initiatives and proposals dedicated to peace and stability in the Middle East, which have garnered broad recognition and a positive response from the international community. During this visit, President Xi Jinping emphasized that the sovereignty and security of all countries should be respected, encouraged all parties to adhere to peaceful options, and supported the return of the United States and Iran to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, the early resumption of dialogue and negotiations, and the eventual conclusion of a comprehensive agreement covering nuclear issues and other matters. International public opinion has highly praised China’s objective and impartial stance, noting that by addressing the root causes of issues, emphasizing both symptomatic and root-cause solutions, respecting the sovereignty of all countries, and promoting dialogue and consultation, China is playing a constructive role in de-escalating tensions in the Middle East. The international community looks forward to China offering “Chinese solutions” and “Chinese wisdom” for resolving more pressing global issues.

人工智能健康、安全、有序发展，关乎人类未来，离不开中美协作。此访期间，习近平主席同特朗普总统就人工智能问题深入沟通，指出中美都是人工智能大国，有能力也有责任发展好、管控好人工智能，确保人工智能发展始终受控于人、造福于民。中美应该各展所长而不是相互设防。两国元首商定，用好中美人工智能对话机制，就其风险和收益进行交流，共同防范人工智能被滥用恶用。

The healthy, safe, and orderly development of artificial intelligence is crucial to the future of humanity and cannot be achieved without cooperation between China and the United States. During this visit, President Xi Jinping and President Trump engaged in in-depth discussions on artificial intelligence. They noted that both China and the United States are major players in the field of artificial intelligence and have both the capability and the responsibility to develop and regulate it properly, ensuring that its development remains under human control and benefits the people. China and the United States should leverage their respective strengths rather than erect barriers against one another. The two heads of state agreed to make full use of the China-U.S. Artificial Intelligence Dialogue Mechanism to exchange views on its risks and benefits and to jointly prevent the misuse or abuse of artificial intelligence.

今年是东京审判开庭80周年。中美同为联合国安理会常任理事国，维护战后国际秩序、防止军国主义复活，是双方的共同责任。

中美将在今年第四季度分别主办亚太经合组织领导人非正式会议和二十国集团领导人峰会。两国元首确认相互支持，为亚太合作和全球治理持续注入动能。

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Tokyo Trials. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, China and the United States share a common responsibility to uphold the postwar international order and prevent the resurgence of militarism.

In the fourth quarter of this year, China and the United States will respectively host the APEC Leaders’ Informal Meeting and the G20 Leaders’ Summit. The two heads of state reaffirmed their mutual support to continue injecting momentum into Asia-Pacific cooperation and global governance.

王毅最后说，此次历史性访问丰富了中美建设性战略稳定关系的内涵，维护了中美关系总体稳定的大局，创造和书写了中美关系的时代新篇，将对世界和平与发展事业产生深远影响。从“相聚北京”到“相约华盛顿”，习近平主席始终以高瞻远瞩的战略眼光和兼济天下的宽广胸襟，引领中美关系行稳致远。习近平主席从容自信的领袖风范给美国各界留下深刻印象，激发了美国人民走近中国、感知中国的热情，在美国社会播下了友谊种子。短短一个月时间里，习近平主席3次出访，辐射周边国家、联动全球南方、运筹外交全局，让中国理念更得人心，大国作用更加凸显，国际影响力进一步提升。我们要继续深刻领悟践行习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想特别是习近平外交思想，以更昂扬的精神状态、更坚定的奋斗意志，全力开创新时代中国特色大国外交新局面，为以中国式现代化全面推进强国建设、民族复兴伟业营造更有利国际环境、提供更坚实战略支撑。

Wang Yi concluded by saying that this historic visit has enriched the substance of the constructive strategic stability between China and the United States, safeguarded the overall stability of China-U.S. relations, and written a new chapter in the history of China-U.S. relations, which will have a far-reaching impact on the cause of world peace and development. From “Meeting in Beijing” to “Meeting in Washington,” President Xi Jinping has consistently guided U.S.-China relations toward steady and far-reaching progress with his far-sighted strategic vision and broad-mindedness dedicated to the common good of all. President Xi Jinping’s composed and confident leadership has left a deep impression on all sectors of American society, inspired the American people’s enthusiasm to engage with and understand China, and sown the seeds of friendship throughout American society. In just one month, President Xi Jinping undertook three overseas visits, reaching out to neighboring countries, engaging with the Global South, and strategically orchestrating the overall diplomatic landscape—thereby making China’s vision more widely embraced, further highlighting China’s role as a major power, and enhancing its international influence. We must continue to deeply comprehend and put into practice Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era—particularly Xi Jinping’s diplomatic thought—and, with even greater enthusiasm and unwavering determination, make every effort to open up a new chapter in major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics in the new era. This will create a more favorable international environment and provide more solid strategic support for comprehensively advancing the great cause of national rejuvenation and building a great nation through Chinese-style modernization.

Originally published in Chinese by Xinhua News Agency on September 26, 2026. Translated into English by Yi Qin for the Center for China Analysis.

Mixed messages have become a defining feature of U.S.-China clean technology competition. Ahead of the recent Trump-Xi summit in Washington, rumors had flown that Xi would bring a delegation with clean tech CEOs – but he arrived without any such executives. No deals were announced, despite speculation about potential Chinese manufacturing investment in the U.S. following the May announcement of a “Board of Investment” intended to facilitate bilateral investment opportunities.

For his part, Trump has reiterated his support for China’s leading auto companies to make vehicles in the U.S., even as his transportation secretary lambasted Ford for partnering with a major Chinese battery firm. In response, Ford pointed out that the White House had praised its wholly owned Michigan factory producing batteries using that technology only a week prior.

The United States may be teetering between two divergent futures. In one version, despite a high-level détente, new restrictions will further constrain access to Chinese clean tech inputs and effectively create an isolated market. In an alternative scenario, political space may emerge for American companies to partner with Chinese firms. Where the United States lands may shape the range of future possibilities for America’s energy systems and industrial competitiveness as well as bilateral relations.

Despite a high-level thaw, restrictions are expanding

When Trump visited Beijing in May, the White House announced a so-called “Board of Investment” to discuss issues related to foreign direct investment. Some wondered if the new forum could be a channel for advancing joint ventures and other partnerships in the United States in certain clean tech sectors, especially EVs and batteries. But four months later, the Board has little progress to show, with this month’s summit only reaffirming its establishment and both the U.S. and China arguing that the ball is in the other side’s court. By comparison, in the months since it was stood up, its sibling Board of Trade identified $30 billion worth of non-sensitive goods for reciprocal tariff cuts from each country.

In the meantime, a wave of new policies addressing Chinese inputs into U.S. clean tech sectors has been announced or moved forward. The bipartisan Connected Vehicle Security Act advanced unanimously from committee in July after its introduction in late April, with the Senate expected to move quickly on it in November following the midterm elections. The proposed legislation would build on the Commerce Department’s January 2025 Connected Vehicles Rule (CVR) by enshrining restrictions on Chinese-origin vehicles, software, and other key parts into law. While Volvo has received a waiver to continue selling its vehicles in the United States despite the CVR, Polestar – which shares the same Chinese majority owner as Volvo and builds its vehicles on the same production line in South Carolina – was denied one, reflecting unexplained inconsistencies in the CVR’s implementation.

Outside of Congress, in late July, the Federal Communications Commission banned foreign power inverters that have not received pre-approval, a move expected to be targeted at Chinese manufacturers. The following week, the Commerce Department concluded its investigation into polysilicon imports under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act by imposing minimum price floors and ad valorem tariffs on polysilicon and other inputs spanning the solar supply chain, including ingots, wafers, cells, and modules. Later in August, the White House issued an executive order declaring a national emergency “to secure the United States bulk-power system” by prohibiting foreign-produced electric equipment from being connected to the American power grid.

While impacts may range, the overall signal is clear

These actions align to send a signal that Chinese inputs are not welcome, sometimes regardless of where they are produced. However, their substantive impacts may differ. For instance, some analysts believe the ban on inverters will be manageable for the industry, though others contend it could pose a greater threat to renewables development in the United States than existing Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions that prevent projects with material assistance from China from accessing certain clean technology tax credits. For solar, the new tariffs are expected to lock in a price differential that artificially favors domestically produced solar, which will raise the price of solar projects and may slow deployment. The Commerce Department has also moved to prevent stockpiling of polysilicon and related solar supply chain products ahead of when the new tariffs take effect in December.

The impacts of the executive order on securing the U.S. bulk-power system are still unclear but could be more consequential, especially for the U.S.’s ability to meet rapidly rising energy demand. The policy covers both software and hardware, despite research illustrating that certain “dumb” hardware components, such as batteries, pose little cybersecurity risk and may not warrant the same restrictions. The order also includes a removal clause that could instigate a large-scale “rip-and-replace” effort to remove and replace already-installed batteries, even with their role in balancing rapidly growing energy loads from AI data centers. Regardless of current tariffs, many developers are still purchasing Chinese batteries, which are often still cheaper or offer technological advantages over domestic ones that meet FEOC criteria to qualify for tax credits. The Department of Energy now has until late December to clarify the order’s implementation, including which equipment will be subject to restrictions and whether existing installations will need to be replaced. In the meantime, the range of uncertainty remains high, leaving many developers at a standstill.

Yet Chinese investment is increasingly seen as key to catching up

At the same time, a growing chorus of voices is publicly expressing support for Chinese investment in the U.S. on the grounds that it is essential for American competitiveness and industrial policy catch-up. Former Biden administration National Economic Council director Brian Deese recently made the case in Foreign Affairs that accepting some Chinese investment may be critical for rebuilding American firms’ competitiveness. An earlier Foreign Affairs article similarly assessed the cost of excluding Chinese investment from the U.S. market, particularly for American competitiveness. Both authors of that piece are members of a task force working group convened by UC San Diego that recently issued its findings on a framework for Chinese FDI in the United States, calling for the U.S. to “move beyond its current security-first approach to Chinese investment and become both more selective and more open.”

Importantly, these proponents are not arguing for opening the floodgates. Rather, they acknowledge that while Chinese investment could enhance American industrial competitiveness, related policies must be carefully constructed in order to deliver the intended benefits. Even so, questions linger over how Chinese companies might respond given Beijing is increasingly restricting corporate activities abroad. In early June, the State Council issued a new regulation on outbound investment, which went into effect on July 1. The regulation will elevate scrutiny on projects that involve technology transfer by further institutionalizing screening and approval, enabling Beijing to ensure that investments align with its national security and diplomatic interests. Still, the only way to test Beijing’s stance may be by putting actual investments on the table.

For the U.S., a potential China COP in 2028 adds complexity

Where the United States lands on its approach to Chinese clean tech may shape future possibilities for American industrial policy. Under a more decoupled scenario, understanding China’s industrial experience, particularly where it has succeeded, could still remain valuable as the United States builds alternative supply chains. An alternate case where political and policy space is maintained for U.S. companies to partner with Chinese firms and leverage their technologies may elicit a different set of questions: What, exactly, does the United States need from Chinese players that is politically viable back home? How transferable in practice are various technologies, learnings, and know-how? Will leveraging Chinese technologies as inputs create any critical national security risks? And how much will various technologies really help the United States innovate and catch up?

One further consideration is public reporting that China is considering hosting the UN climate conference in 2028, which would take place just after the next U.S. presidential election. While Beijing is merely weighing its options at this point, China’s consideration of hosting COP33 reflects how rapidly Beijing’s climate position has evolved, as well as the dynamic forces, both in China and the United States, that will shape the future of the bilateral relationship. Regardless of whether China hosts the conference, the options facing a new U.S. president in 2028 may depend on where the current administration lands on a more restrictive or more open approach to Chinese clean technologies, and how the next administration chooses to connect climate diplomacy with its trade and investment strategy.

Key Takeaways

• “Effective compute” is something firms can create rather than acquire. Across the “Six Tigers,” algorithmic innovation, memory optimization, and whole software rewrites have increased how much AI capability can be extracted from fixed amounts of compute.

• Export controls are pushing much earlier model-chip co-design. Rather than adapting after models are built, firms like StepFun and Z.ai are increasingly developing models alongside domestic hardware manufacturers, while Huawei, Biren, Moore Threads, and Cambricon, among others, are optimizing their hardware according to the needs of model developers.

• China’s dependence on Nvidia’s GPUs is becoming increasingly concentrated on frontier model training as domestic hardware proves increasingly capable of supporting a widening range of inference and deployment workloads.

• Export controls on frontier AI hardware have created durable path dependence in China’s AI ecosystem. As firms optimize models for Huawei Ascend, integrate with MindSpore, and participate in domestic chip alliances, switching back to American technology will prove costly even if controls are loosened.

Introduction

Anthropic’s recent report alleging large-scale distillation by Chinese labs has raised widespread questions about how Chinese firms are achieving advanced capabilities.^[1] Specifically, it accused Moonshot AI of routing user requests through Claude while attributing outputs to its new flagship model, Kimi K3. In this process, Moonshot potentially exposed sensitive, government-linked information, raising challenges about security practices at one of China’s premier frontier labs as it prepares for its IPO. Moreover, it shows how access to frontier U.S. models can provide Chinese firms with alternative pathways to advanced capabilities, even as Washington restricts the hardware traditionally necessary to develop those capabilities independently.

While Anthropic is correct to highlight distillation techniques, distillation is only one part of a wider pattern of adaptation. China’s most prominent AI start-ups – collectively known as the “Six Tigers” – Z.ai, Moonshot AI, StepFun, Baichuan AI, MiniMax, and 01.AI, have progressively reduced their reliance on the American technology stack through adapting models to domestic processors and developing more compute-efficient model architectures, often in combination. Taken together, their responses show how the technological bottlenecks constraining Chinese advances are not static. As Washington restricts one part of the AI technology stack, Chinese firms have successfully substituted, economized on, or circumvented that constraint, shifting the once binding bottleneck elsewhere.

In this context, the primary challenge for policymakers is a classic moving-target problem. Access to frontier compute is important, but it is more substitutable than conventionally assumed. Algorithmic efficiencies have reduced the amount of compute required, domestic processors have substituted – albeit imperfectly – for Nvidia hardware, and access to cloud infrastructure provides alternate means to achieve frontier capabilities. Export controls will therefore only be effective when they evolve in tandem with the changing sources of Chinese AI capability, rather than remain fixed on a single technological constraint.

The table below examines the six individual AI tigers and evaluates their performance across several metrics, including adoption of mixture of experts (MoE) architectures – which activate only a subset of a model’s specialized components, reducing the compute needed to run large models – utilization of domestic chip technologies, and responses to export controls.

Algorithmic and Scaling Efficiencies

Restricted access to advanced Nvidia processors has compelled Chinese labs to make the most of limited compute. Several of the “Six Tigers” have developed novel model architectures with this explicit purpose. StepFun’s Step-3, for example, leveraged a new method known as Matrix Factorized Attention (MFA) to reduce the amount of temporary memory required while a model is generating responses, making it significantly more efficient on hardware with limited memory bandwidth.^[33] Compared with DeepSeek’s earlier Multi-Head Latent Attention (MLA) approach, StepFun reports that MFA reduces memory requirements by nearly 94 percent.^[34] As a result, Step-3 reportedly achieves higher inference efficiency on Huawei’s Ascend 910B than even Huawei’s own Pangu Pro MoE model.^[35] Likewise, MiniMax developed a proprietary “MiniMax” Sparse Attention (MSA) architecture embedded in its M3 model.^[36] Rather than processing every word equally, MSA first identified the parts of the input that were most relevant and focused computing power on those sections. By avoiding unnecessary computation, it could process context windows of up to one million tokens while using up twenty times less compute per token than conventional approaches.^[37] Z.ai similarly incorporated a new sparse attention technique named IndexShare into GLM 5.2, reducing the computing power needed to process each token by nearly two-thirds at a one-million token context length.^[38]

Meanwhile, Moonshot incorporated Kimi Delta Attention and a highly-sparse mixture-of-experts architecture into Kimi K3 that activates only 16 of its 896 experts per token.^[39] Kimi’s hybrid attention architecture reduced the memory required by long outputs by as much as 75 percent and increased processing throughput by six times at a one million token context compared to conventional architecture.^[40] Moreover, Moonshot developed a new training technique called MoonClip (also called MuonClip), which the company says can achieve comparable training performance using approximately half as much data and computing power by preventing instability from exploding attention scores.^[41] These innovations were complemented by lower-precision model weights that reduced memory and computational requirements.^[42] Altogether, the company claimed that Kimi K3 had achieved 2.5 times the overall scaling efficiency of Kimi K2.^[43] Even 01.AI, prior to its shift away from building large foundational models, successfully replaced the dense architecture used in Yi-Large with a mixture-of-experts architecture for Yi-Lighting. As a result, Yi-Lighting’s time to first token was reportedly half that of Yi-Large, while its maximum generation speed increased by nearly 40 percent.^[44]

These developments reflect a wider skepticism among Chinese AI executives about continuing to rely on brute-force scaling alone to achieve frontier capabilities. Z.ai CEO Zhang Peng has argued that scaling laws describe the empirical relationship between compute and model architecture without adequately detailing why intelligence emerges. Since the causal relationship is not better understood, allocating increasing amounts of compute to train larger models was nothing but “expensive guesswork.”^[45] Reflecting on the success of DeepSeek-R1, Zhang stated that its significance lay in moving away from the “brute-force” logic of piling on parameters or data and demonstrating that algorithmic optimization could concurrently reduce costs and improve performance.^[46]

Other Chinese executives more explicitly attributed algorithmic innovations to compute constraints. MiniMax CEO Yan Junjie argued that “China has a significant gap with the United States in computing resources. Therefore, we have to rely on more innovative methods if we are to achieve comparable results.”^[47] Indeed, he suggested that “because of compute constraints, Chinese talent may be actually forced to produce more innovation.”^[48] Kai-Fu Lee similarly argued that engineering improvements had “to some extent offset” challenges posed by U.S. export controls after training Yi-Lighting with only 2,000 GPUs at just USD $3 million.^[49]

These adaptations do not show that export controls were ineffective. Access to frontier processors remains an important advantage, particularly for large-scale training. Instead, these innovations show how constraints on compute do not translate proportionally into constraints on capability, as Chinese labs have often successfully compensated for hardware scarcity through greater algorithmic efficiencies.

Hardware Substitution

Another response has been efforts to substitute restricted American hardware with an increasingly integrated domestic computing stack. While Chinese processors remain inferior to Nvidia’s high-end GPUs, model developers are increasingly optimizing their models around those limitations instead of waiting for domestic hardware to achieve technological parity.

StepFun, for example, emphasized the importance of tailoring AI models to the strengths of different chips. Company researchers asserted that DeepSeek-V3 is best suited for Nvidia’s H800, Alibaba’s Qwen 3 aligns naturally with the H20, while Step-3 is particularly well optimized for Huawei’s Ascend 910B.^[50] It also established a “Model-Chip Ecosystem Innovation Alliance” with Huawei, Cambricon, Biren, Moore Threads, and other domestic chipmakers. Instead of getting companies to optimize software for a single processor, the alliance sought to ensure that models developed by StepFun were compatible with AI chips manufactured by different hardware companies.^[51] Zhu Yibo, StepFun’s CEO, described one benefit of the alliance in clear terms, stating that “before the next generation of chips launches, we will already have early access to aspects of their design.”^[52] Others subscribed to similar industry alliances. Before Baichuan withdrew from the large foundation model race, it joined an industry consortium in Beijing named the “Large Model Application Industry Consortium.” Organized around Huawei’s technology stack, including Ascend processors, the Kunpeng computing platform, MindSpore, and ModelArts, the alliance enabled Baichuan to optimize its models for other domestic processors as well, including Cambricon accelerators.

Z.ai went further. It was the first among the “Six Tigers” to train a model on domestic hardware. In January 2026, the company announced that GLM-Image, its open-source image generation model, was trained on Huawei’s Ascend Atlas Servers and its MindSpore framework.^[53] Company representatives described the project as a “comprehensive exploration and validation of China’s domestic computing ecosystem,” noting that every stage of development, from preparing training data to model training, had been completed on Huawei’s hardware.^[54] Z.ai scientists successfully rewrote key parts of its training software so that different training stages could occur concurrently and processors could communicate more efficiently.^[55] By mid-2026, Z.ai was so confident in Chinese computing infrastructure that it announced a one-gigawatt AI data center it intended to stock with only Chinese-made processors.^[56] Huawei almost certainly does not have enough chips to supply the facility. The investment, however, emphasizes the company’s expectation that domestic hardware will form a new foundation for its model development. In the same month, Z.ai reportedly engaged in discussions with domestic chip design houses about building a custom processor for its GLM family.^[57]

The speed of domestic adoption has also increased significantly. When Moonshot released K3, Huawei, Alibaba, and Hygon provided inference support on “day one.”^[58] One Chinese researcher argued that the ability of all of these companies to adapt in such a short period demonstrates that “the industry’s coordination cycle has compressed the scale of quarters to the scale of days.”^[59] These developments do not suggest that Chinese hardware manufacturers have caught up with Nvidia. Rather, they demonstrate that substitution does not require technological parity. As model developers and chipmakers enter industry alliances and optimize their products around each other, inferior processors can still become sufficient substitutes for a wide range of workloads.

Adaptation Is Not Circumvention

Both forms of adoption should be distinguished from circumvention, which entails bypassing controls rather than adapting to them. Chinese AI firms have acquired computing resources through several circumvention channels. Before controls tightened, for example, 01.AI accumulated a large inventory of high-end chips. Lee stated in November 2023 that the company had bought enough high-end Nvidia GPUs to sustain its operations for fourteen months, declaring bluntly that “we have stockpiled a lot of Nvidia chips.”^[60]

Meanwhile, MiniMax avoided constructing its own GPU infrastructure altogether, opting instead to lease access to GPU clusters from cloud providers across China and Singapore, including at least three providers in Beijing and another in Zhejiang.^[61] Moonshot did the same, reportedly training Kimi K3 using a cluster of 20,000 chips accessed through Alibaba Cloud.^[62] K3’s training infrastructure was dispersed across several locales. Since no supplier could provide sufficient compute alone, Moonshot relied on at least two Chinese cloud providers that provided access to Nvidia’s Blackwell chips and linked computing resources located in different data centers.^[63] Its engineers successfully optimized networking between different centers so that partial supplies of advanced compute could function as part of a larger training system.^[64] In this sense, compute restrictions did not only encourage Moonshot to seek alternative hardware, but also incentivized it to come up with new systems to source compute across diverse providers and locations.

Following the Bottleneck

The experience of China’s “Six Tigers” demonstrates that the effectiveness of export controls cannot be measured by the amount or sophistication of computing hardware they restrict. What matters more is how much those restrictions increase the cost and time required for Chinese labs to realize frontier capabilities, and how long those effects last as firms adapt. Several policy implications can be identified here.

First, it would be remiss to treat compute requirements as fixed. Across the “Six Tigers,” algorithmic innovations, memory optimization, and software rewrites have allowed more AI capability to be derived from a fixed amount of compute. Firms can therefore increase their computational capabilities without acquiring additional or more sophisticated hardware. This process is not limited to models alone. StepFun and Z.ai are optimizing models around domestic processors while hardware manufacturers like Huawei, Moore Threads, and Cambricon tailor their products to the demands of model developers. Policymakers must therefore emphasize “effective compute,” focusing not simply on the quantity and sophistication of chips available to Chinese firms, but how effectively fixed amounts of compute can be converted into frontier AI capabilities.

Second, policymakers must continuously reassess where the binding technological bottleneck lies. China’s reliance on foreign chips is increasingly workload-specific as domestic hardware enables a widening range of inference and deployment workloads. Firms like Moonshot that are stitching together compute across different providers and data centers to support a single model make factors like large-cluster integration, inference infrastructure, and high-speed networking increasingly important constraints. The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) must institutionalize a periodic review of these constraints rather than relying on static assumptions about which parts of the AI stack provide Washington with the most leverage.

Third, the temporal dimensions of export controls must be readily distinguished. Export controls constrain Chinese capabilities in the short term while simultaneously accelerating algorithmic efficiencies and the consolidation of a domestic, end-to-end technology stack in the long term. As firms increasingly optimize around domestic hardware, integrate with MindSpore, partake in industry alliances, and build data centers around Chinese processors, reverting to an American technology stack will prove increasingly costly even if controls are loosened. This path dependence means that the consequences of export controls may outlast the restrictions themselves.

Endnotes

^[1] Tolomia, Cris. “Anthropic says Chinese AI labs secretly used hundreds of millions of Claude exchanges to train their models.” Quartz, September 11, 2026. https://qz.com/anthropic-chinese-ai-labs-distillation-alibaba-deepseek-moonshot-091126; “Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026.” Anthropic, September 10, 2026. https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/e50be2e51e7695dc4b1366a37a245a597377d3b5/Anthropic-Detecting-and-countering-091026.pdf.

^[2] James, Luke. “Chinese Z.ai’s latest model tops AI ranking charts amid Anthropic Fable 5 ban- blacklisted China’s firm’s popular open-weight GLM 5.2 AI model powered by Huawei silicon.” Tom’s Hardware, June 30, 2026. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/z-ai-free-glm-5-2-tops-the-open-weight-ai-rankings-on-all-huawei-silicon; Russell, Jon. “Zhipu, China’s breakout AI star, is raising billions despite best being known for open-source software.” Asia Tech Review, June 25, 2026.; Venkat, P.P. “Z.AI Plans $5.0 Billion Fundraising to Fuel AI Expansion.” Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2026. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/z-ai-plans-5-0-billion-fundraising-to-fuel-ai-expansion-56da16dc.

^[3] “Moonshot AI Surpasses Funding Goal to Hit $35 Billion Value.” Bloomberg, July 29, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-29/china-s-moonshot-ai-passes-funding-goal-to-hit-35-billion-value; “In Depth: Inside the $50 Billion Rise of Moonshot AI.” Caixin, September 11, 2026. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2026-09-11/in-depth-inside-the-50-billion-rise-of-moonshot-ai-102484028.html.

^[4] Ngui, Yantoultra, Kane Wu, and Liam Mo. “MiniMax, China’s second ‘AI tiger’ to go public, doubles value in Hong Kong output.” Reuters, January 8, 2026. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-ai-firm-minimax-set-012942121.html.

^[5] Chen, Elaine. “Chinese AI startup StepFun seeks $12 billion valuation in Hong Kong IPO.” Digitimes, June 10, 2026. https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20260609VL212/china-ai-startup-ipo-financing-deepseek-technology.html.

^[6] “Baichuan- Company Profile.” Tracxn, June 14, 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/baichuan/__nyczwSZaD75dOWgygmpH3BzBn75Ah90GXmE0_DAuBAM; Berman, Noah. “Baichuan’s Big Pivot.” The Wire China, March 30, 2025. https://www.thewirechina.com/2025/03/30/baichuans-big-pivot-baichuan-ai-china/.

^[7] Rai, Saritha and Peter Elstrom. “AI Pioneer Kai-Fu Lee Builds $1 Billion Startup in Eight Months.” Bloomberg, November 5, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-05/kai-fu-lee-s-open-source-01-ai-bests-llama-2-according-to-hugging-face; “01. AI- Company Profile.” Tracxn, June 7, 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/01ai/__-gDw3QA2cxhEHCuampmbLXvEk9cBAO1Opo3mdn774Kg.

^[8] “China’s MiniMax plans to launch 2.7 trillion parameter model.” Reuters, July 8, 2026.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinas-minimax-plans-launch-giant-27-trillion-parameter-model-2026-07-08/.

^[9] “GLM 4.5,” https://z.ai/blog/glm-4.5.

^[10] Chan, Kyle. “Competing AI strategies for the US and China.” Brookings Institution, April 16, 2026. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/competing-ai-strategies-for-the-us-and-china/.

^[11] https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/minimax-m2-7-advances-scalable-agentic-workflows-on-nvidia-platforms-for-complex-ai-applications/

^[12] “Step 3.7 Flash”

https://platform.stepfun.ai/docs/en/guides/models/step-3.7-flash; https://static.stepfun.com/blog/step-3.5-flash/

^[13] https://pandaily.com/baichuan-ai-launches-low-hallucination-medical-model-m3-plus-announces-free-access-program; https://arxiv.org/html/2309.10305v4

^[14] Young, Alex, Bei Chen, Chao Li, Chengen Huang, Ge Zhang, Guanwei Zhang, Guoyin Wang et al. “Yi: Open foundation models by 01. ai.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.04652 (2024). https://arxiv.org/html/2403.04652v1.

^[15] Shen, Xinmei. “China weighs open-weight AI’s security risks against national tech innovation strategy: researchers.” South China Morning Post, July 8, 2026. https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3359791/china-weighs-open-weight-ais-security-risks-against-national-tech-innovation-strategy-researchers.

^[16] “Kimi 2.5.” Moonshot AI, https://github.com/MoonshotAI/Kimi-K2.5.

^[17] “MiniMax is building China’s biggest AI model yet, and plans to open-source it.” The Next Web, July 8, 2026. https://thenextweb.com/news/minimax-2-7-trillion-parameter-open-source-model.

^[18] “Stepfun-ai/Step-3.5-Flash,” Nvidia NIM, https://build.nvidia.com/stepfun-ai/step-3.5-flash.

^[19] “StepFun: Models Intelligence, Performance, and Price.” Artificial Analysis, https://artificialanalysis.ai/providers/stepfun.

^[20] Young, Alex, Bei Chen, Chao Li, Chengen Huang, Ge Zhang, Guanwei Zhang, Guoyin Wang et al. “Yi: Open foundation models by 01. ai.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.04652 (2024). https://arxiv.org/html/2403.04652v1.

^[21] U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, “Addition of Entities to and Revision of Entry on the Entity List,” Federal Register 90, no. 10 (January 16, 2025): 4617–21. Federal Register.

^[22] Chow, Vincent. “Zhipu AI Breaks US Chip Reliance With First Major Model Trained on Huawei Stack.” South China Morning Post, January 14, 2026. https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3339869/zhipu-ai-breaks-us-chip-reliance-first-major-model-trained-huawei-stack; “GLM-5 vs QWen 3.5: China’s Two AI Giants Go Head-to-Heard (2026),” Morph, March 2, 2026. https://www.morphllm.com/comparisons/glm-5-vs-qwen-3-5; “GLM-5: China’s First Public AI Company Ships a Frontier Model,” Hugging Face, February 17, 2026. https://huggingface.co/blog/mlabonne/glm-5.

^[23] “AI Daily: Kimi K3 to be launched in the third quarter; Nvidia releases a multimodal all-round model; Claude integrates deeply with Adobe and Blender. AI Base, April 29, 2026. https://news.aibase.com/daily/27605.

^[24] “Huawei Cloud Adapts MiniMax’s Latest M3 Model, Accelerating Synergy in China’s Domestic AI Ecosystem and Benefiting Chips and Computing Infrastructure” (“华为云适配MiniMax最新模型M3，国产AI生态协同加速，芯片与算力基础设施受益”), Sina Finance (新浪财经), June 15, 2026, https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/t/2026-06-15/doc-inicnckx8282541.shtml; Cheng, Evelyn, “CNBC’s The China Connection newsletter: China learns to build without Nvidia.” CNBC, June 1, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/china-learns-to-build-without-nvidia.html.

^[25] “Chinese AI chipmakers join forces with StepFun to counter Nvidia’s return to China.” TechNode, July 31, 2025. https://technode.com/2025/07/30/chinese-ai-chipmakers-join-forces-with-stepfun-to-counter-nvidias-return-to-china/.

^[26] Lin Zhijia (林志佳), “Model Inference Costs Drop by as Much as 99%! Baichuan Intelligence Launches One-Stop Large-Model Commercialization Solution” (“模型推理成本下降最高99%！百川智能发布一站式大模型商业化解决方案”), TMTPost (钛媒体), October 31, 2024, https://www.tmtpost.com/7316880.html.

^[27] Rai, Saritha and Yoolim Lee. “China AI Startup Stockpiled 18 Months of Nvidia Chips Before Ban.” Bloomberg, November 9, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-10/china-ai-startup-stockpiled-18-months-of-nvidia-chips-before-ban.

^[28] Chen, Laurie. “After Anthropic shutdown, China’s Z.ai closes frontier gap as it plans dual listing.” Reuters, June 25, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/after-anthropic-shutdown-chinas-zai-closes-frontier-gap-it-plans-dual-listing-2026-06-25/.

^[29] Tobin, Meaghan. “China Seeks A.I. Independence Weakening Trump’s Leverage.” New York Times, May 12, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/china-semiconductor-ai-deepseek.html.

^[30] “StepFun’s AI Infrastructure Strategy 2026: Building China’s Sovereign Compute Ecosystem.” Enki AI, https://enkiai.com/ai-market-intelligence/step-fun-ai-strategy-2026-inside-chinas-ai-ecosystem/.

^[31] Ding, Jeffrey. “ChinAI #305: Computing Power Shifts in the Inference Era.” ChinAI Newsletter, March 24, 2025.

^[32] Lee, Yoolim and Saritha Rai. “China AI Startup Stockpiled 18 Nvidia Chips Before Ban.” Bloomberg, November 9, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-10/china-ai-startup-stockpiled-18-months-of-nvidia-chips-before-ban.

^[33] Ibid.

^[34] Ibid.

^[35] Ibid.

^[36] “MiniMax M3.” Minimax, https://www.minimax.io/models/text/m3.

^[37] “MiniMax M3: Frontier Coding, 1M Context, Native Multimodality – All in One Model.” Minimax, June 1, 2026. https://www.minimax.io/blog/minimax-m3; Lai, Xunhao, Weiqi Xu, Yufeng Yang, Qiaorui Chen, Yang Xu, Lunbin Zeng, Xiaolong Li et al. “Minimax sparse attention.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.13392 (2026). https://arxiv.org/html/2606.13392v1.

^[38] “GLM 5.2: Built for Long-Horizon Tasks.” Z.ai, June 16, 2026. https://z.ai/blog/glm-5.2.

^[39] “Kimi K3 Goes Open Source as Domestic Computing Platforms Race to Support It, but Only for Inference, Not Training” (Kimi K3开源，国产算力争相跑通，但仅在推理，未达训练). Caiwen (财闻), July 28, 2026. https://www.caiwennews.com/article/1533362.shtml; “Kimi K3 Goes Open Source: Heated Discussion Overseas as Huawei, Alibaba, and Other Domestic Computing Platforms Complete Adaptation” (Kimi K3开源：海外热议，华为阿里等国产算力已适配). Guancha (观察者网), July 28, 2026. https://www.guancha.cn/economy/2026_07_28_825302.shtml.

^[40] “Leading the Nation: AI Companies’ Deep Cultivation and Perseverance” [领跑全国，AI企业的深耕与坚守]. Science and Technology Daily [科技日报], March 4, 2026. https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/info/1182/124486.htm.

^[41] “Kimi K3 Officially Open-Sourced, with Alibaba, Huawei, and Other Vendors Providing Day-One Support” (Kimi K3正式开源，阿里、华为等厂商首日适配). 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道), July 28, 2026. https://m.21jingji.com/article/20260728/herald/122ffcb35b01b2c72392ceb63c42d68d.html.

^[42] “Kimi K3 Goes Open Source as Domestic Computing Platforms Race to Support It, but Only for Inference, Not Training” (Kimi K3开源，国产算力争相跑通，但仅在推理，未达训练). Caiwen (财闻), July 28, 2026. https://www.caiwennews.com/article/1533362.shtml; “Kimi K3 Goes Open Source: Heated Discussion Overseas as Huawei, Alibaba, and Other Domestic Computing Platforms Complete Adaptation” (Kimi K3开源：海外热议，华为阿里等国产算力已适配). Guancha (观察者网), July 28, 2026. https://www.guancha.cn/economy/2026_07_28_825302.shtml.

^[43] “Kimi K3 Officially Open-Sourced, with Alibaba, Huawei, and Other Vendors Providing Day-One Support” (Kimi K3正式开源，阿里、华为等厂商首日适配). 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道), July 28, 2026. https://m.21jingji.com/article/20260728/herald/122ffcb35b01b2c72392ceb63c42d68d.html.

^[44] “01.AI Releases Flagship Pretrained Model; Kai-Fu Lee Responds to Rumors About the ‘Six AI Tigers’ Facing Difficulties” [“零一万物发布旗舰预训练模型，李开复回应AI六小虎困境传言”], China Information Technology (中国信息化), October 16, 2024. https://www.citnews.com.cn/news/202410/187166.html.

^[45] Jiang, Mable. “The Trailblazer: How a Tsinghua Lab Spawned the World’s 1^st LLM IPO.” X (Twitter), March 22, 2026. https://x.com/Mable_Jiang/article/2035714797426413639.

^[46] Fang Sanwen (方三文), “ Fang Sanwen in Conversation with Zhipu CEO Zhang Peng: There Won’t Be Just One Large Model; Diversity Is the Driving Force of Technological Innovation.” (方略| 方三文对话智谱CEO张鹏：大模型不会只剩一家，多样性是技术革新的源动力”), Sina Finance (新浪财经), March 9, 2026. https://finance.sina.com.cn/wm/2026-03-09/doc-inhqksxk9830404.shtml.

^[47] Li Chaofan (李超凡), “MiniMax Yan Junjie and Luo Yonghao’s Four-Hour Interview: Finding a Third Path for Chinese AI, Mountains Are Not Impossible to Cross” (“MiniMax 闫俊杰和罗永浩四小时访谈：走出中国AI的第三条路，大山并非不可翻越”], 36Kr (36氪), December 11, 2025. https://eu.36kr.com/zh/p/3590840490688517.

^[48] Li Dan (李丹), “Reviewing Luo Yonghao’s Conversation with MiniMax’s Yan Junjie: How an AI-Native Company Grew” (“复盘罗永浩对谈MiniMax闫俊杰：一个AI原生的公司是怎么长出来的”), The Paper (澎湃新闻), December 11, 2025. https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_32148957.

^[49] Kong Yuexin (孔月昕), “Kai-Fu Lee Personally Takes to the To-B Battlefield: ‘I Myself Am the Biggest Salesperson’” (“李开复亲征To B战场：我自己就是最大的销售”), China Entrepreneur Magazine (中国企业家杂志), August 6, 2025. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/zODMSPMwTsV0QjiKZbxgQQ.

^[50] Ibid.

^[51] Shilov, Anton. “China forms AI alliances to cut U.S. tech reliance- Huawei https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/china-forms-ai-alliances-to-cut-u-s-tech-reliance-huawei-among-companies-seeking-to-create-unified-tech-stack-with-domestic-powered-standardization

^[52] “How Significant Is the Alliance Between Domestic Large Models and AI Chips?” (“国产大模型与AI芯片联盟，意义有多重大？”), Guancha (观察者网), July 30, 2025, https://www.guancha.cn/haoping/2025_07_30_784916.shtml.

^[53] Ding, Luz. “China’s Zhipu Unveils New AI Model Trained on Huawei’s Chips.” Bloomberg, January 13, 2026.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-14/china-s-zhipu-unveils-new-ai-model-trained-on-huawei-s-chips; Cui Shuang (崔爽), “Chinese AI Tops Global Rankings! Zhipu and Huawei Join Forces” (“国产AI登顶全球！智谱+华为联手”), Science and Technology Daily (科技日报), January 16, 2026, https://www.stdaily.com/web/gdxw/2026-01/16/content_462870.html.

^[54] Cui Shuang (崔爽), “Chinese AI Tops Global Rankings! Zhipu and Huawei Join Forces” (“国产AI登顶全球！智谱+华为联手”), Science and Technology Daily (科技日报), January 16, 2026, https://www.stdaily.com/web/gdxw/2026-01/16/content_462870.html.

^[55] “Zhipu Launches and Open-Sources GLM-5.2, Adapting It to Domestic Computing Platforms Including Huawei Ascend, Moore Threads, MetaX, and Others” (“智谱上线并开源GLM-5.2，适配华为昇腾、摩尔线程、沐曦等国产算力平台”), China Securities Journal (中国证券报), June 17, 2026, https://jnzstatic.cs.com.cn/zzb/htmlInfo/125336.html.

^[56] “Z.ai to Use Only Chinese AI Chips at New Giant Data Center.” Bloomberg, July 20, 2026.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-20/z-ai-completes-giant-data-center-with-chinese-chips-to-train-ai.

^[57] Liu, Qianer and Juro Osawa. “China’s AI Lab Zhipu Weighs Custom Chip As Demand for its GLM Model Soars.” The Information, July 7, 2026. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinas-ai-lab-ziphu-weighs-custom-chip-demand-glm-model-soars.

^[58] “Kimi K3 Goes Open Source as Domestic Computing Platforms Race to Support It, but Only for Inference, Not Training” (Kimi K3开源，国产算力争相跑通，但仅在推理，未达训练). Caiwen (财闻), July 28, 2026. https://www.caiwennews.com/article/1533362.shtml.

^[59] Ibid.

^[60] Rai, Saritha and Yoolim Lee. “China AI Startup Stockpiled 18 Months of Nvidia Chips Before Ban.” Bloomberg, November 9, 2023. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-10/china-ai-startup-stockpiled-18-months-of-nvidia-chips-before-ban.

^[61] Zhang, Irene. “Zhipu and MiniMax IPO.” ChinaTalk, January 19, 2026.

^[62] Hawkins, Mackenzie and Haze Fan. “Moonshot’s Kimi Uses 20,000 Nvidia Chip Cluster from Alibaba.” Bloomberg, July 31, 2026. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-31/moonshot-s-kimi-built-on-20-000-nvidia-chip-cluster-from-alibaba.

^[63] “Chinese AI Startup Moonshot Seeks More Nvidia Blackwell Chips for Next Model.” The Information, July 28, 2026. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chinese-ai-startup-moonshot-seeks-nvidia-blackwell-chips-next-model.

^[64] Ibid.

Following the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, leading experts examine what the summit means for the U.S.-China relationship. They assess the substance behind the summit’s outcomes—from policy shifts and new mechanisms to signals of intent—and what to watch in the months ahead. Speakers include The Honorable Dr. Kevin Rudd AC, global president and CEO of Asia Society; Amy Celico, executive director of Schwarzman Scholars; Wendy Cutler, senior vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute; and Paul Triolo, honorary senior fellow on technology at the Center for China Analysis (CCA) and partner at Albright Stonebridge Group. Neil Thomas, senior fellow on Chinese politics at CCA, moderates the conversation.

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity and readability with the assistance of AI.

Neil Thomas: Hello, and welcome to this webinar hosted by the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, or CCA. I’m Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at CCA, where I lead our work on Chinese politics, and I am delighted to be moderating today’s conversation on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington, D.C. Over three days, from September 23 to 25, Xi participated in a series of meetings and events with his American counterpart, President Donald Trump, and this was Xi’s first visit to Washington since 2015, and his first to the United States since 2023. But it, of course, came after a period of intensified diplomacy following the supply chain standoff triggered by Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs in April 2025. Since then, the U.S.-China Economic and Trade Consultation Mechanism, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, has met several times. Trump and Xi met in Busan, South Korea, last October and agreed to a trade truce. And Trump visited Beijing in May. For those who want to dig a bit deeper on the summit and its outcomes, CCA has just published this morning some analysis by our experts that we’ll put a link to in the Zoom chat. But even more important, with me today to analyze what Xi’s visit accomplished and what it means for the future of U.S.-China relations is an incredible high-level panel. Kevin Rudd is the global president and CEO of Asia Society, a former prime minister of Australia, and a leading international authority on China. Wendy Cutler is senior vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and previously served as deputy U.S. trade representative. Amy Celico is executive director of Schwarzman Scholars and previously served in senior China-focused roles at USTR and the U.S. Departments of Commerce and State. And Paul Triolo is an honorary senior fellow on technology at CCA, as well as a partner and Technology Policy Lead at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. We only have 45 minutes for this conversation today. We’re finishing at noon. So let’s start with a quick overall assessment of the summit. If we can start with you, please, Kevin. You’ve sat across the negotiating table from both President Trump and President Xi, and I’m curious how do you think they differ in their approaches to diplomacy? How were these differences on display during the summit? And more broadly, how important do you think that the personal relationship between the two leaders is to the broader trajectory of U.S.-China relations?

Kevin Rudd: Thank you, Neil, and greetings everybody who’s tuning into this webinar, and to my colleagues from the Asia Society. I think I’ll make two or three broad remarks to begin with, because we have a lot of expertise to bring to the various elements that were on the discussion table. I won’t say negotiating table in Washington. First, to understand the strategy which the Chinese bring to bear with this and other summits with the President of the United States, China for the immediate period ahead, by which I mean through until the end of next year, when we’ll see the conclusion of the 21st Party Congress, which will decide on the next slate of Chinese leaders, and what I assume to be the reappointment of Xi Jinping for a fourth term, the Chinese are seeking to be in maximal stability mode, by which they mean they would like to bring about a relationship at a strategic level with the United States and between the two leaders through what the Chinese call leader-level diplomacy, in order for there to be a minimal number of surprises coming out of the United States between now and the end of next year. Secondly, the underpinning logic of that is that China does not want any surprises on the economic front through a further exacerbation of the tariff regime, and there’s a reason for that in particular, namely that the Chinese economy domestically is performing poorly. The domestic drivers of growth are not properly functioning. Private domestic demand is still in the doldrums. China’s private fixed capital investment rates are still flat. Private residential construction has been in recession for six consecutive years, and so therefore, one of the few pistons working in the overall economic machine of the Chinese growth model is net exports, so the Chinese, when they want stability, what they mean by that is no more new tariffs, and can we get existing tariffs down? That’s stability mode. I think the third point I make is China going into this particular set of negotiations and meetings and discussions with President Trump would have been seeking to achieve the overall improvement of what is America’s reasonably formidable set of export controls as it relates to advanced technologies and semiconductors in particular. The Chinese have sought to apply their own counter-leverage on this. They’ve sought to do so through their own restrictions on critical minerals and rare earths, and therefore, in the Chinese lens at least, they’ve sought to establish some sort of quid pro quo between these two domains: semiconductor exports from the United States to China on the one hand, which goes to China’s abiding weakness in its AI stack, namely the power of its compute through the lack of power of its semiconductors relative to those of the United States, and at the same time seeking to apply the leverage of critical minerals and rare earth supplies to the Americans in order to induce change on America’s part. On that front, I think we could say, as of now, the Chinese have not achieved their objective, and furthermore, it is, I think, improbable that they will. But I’ll bow to the judgment of others on that. The final element I’d throw into the stability equation is that the Chinese do not want any further surprises on their external strategic circumstances, principally Taiwan, and therefore what they have sought to do, both through the May summit in Beijing and more recently in the summit conducted in Washington, D.C., is to make it harder, as a consequence of the strategic relationship with the United States and the personal relationship between the two presidents for the United States to, as it were, break out and resume normal arm supplies to Taiwan. This is still an open question. We still have two further meetings between Xi Jinping and President Trump before the end of the year. One is at the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November, and the other is the G20 summit, which Trump himself will host at Mar-a-Lago in December, and so the open question in this stability formula, which the Chinese are seeking to, as it were, wrap the United States into, is to cause the United States to conclude that if they want a stable relationship for the long term, they should stop, or at least pause for a significant period of time, fresh arms sales to Taiwan. So there, that’s very much the overall framing. I’d conclude by saying this, however, if we look at outcomes, we saw no real outcomes in terms of critical minerals and rare earths. The Chinese seem to be holding that over the Americans’ head. I therefore doubt that the Americans will move in the direction of a relaxation of technology export controls. But where the Chinese, I think, may be in danger of overplaying their hand is to sustain this set of controls on critical minerals and rare earths for too long, to the point that they fundamentally alienate the president of the United States. And if they fail to deliver further relief to the United States at a level of agricultural imports from America to China, in order to relieve political pressure on the president and the red states, which are now under contention across the Midwest, everywhere from Oklahoma through Nebraska, through Ohio and Iowa, and other points in between, where the farm sector is hurting through a combination of increased input prices, including fuel, and depressed agricultural prices because the Chinese are not buying the soybeans and other products they bought before. And there’s a danger that if the Chinese overplay their leverage hand, their strategic stability hand, they may in fact induce a significant presidential reaction—not this year, but perhaps post-midterms and into next year. I’ll leave my comments there, Neil, and look forward to what other colleagues have got to contribute to the conversation.

Neil Thomas: Thank you, Kevin, for a tour de force overview of the Trump-Xi summit. I think you’re right to end on the importance there of the trade truce and the economic focus of many of the discussions. I’d like to turn to you now, Wendy, as a former U.S. trade negotiator. Right before Trump and Xi met, Scott Bessent announced that the U.S.-China trade truce would be extended by just two months, from November the 10th to January the 10th. But in the days following the summit, we got a much longer list of deliverables, including the operationalization of the Board of Investment and the Board of Trade. The latter is said to have facilitated promises of tariff relief for $30 billion worth of imports from each country to the other. So, I’d love for you to just give your read of the economic state of the relationship, what the summit achieved, and how meaningful do you see those deliverables as being going forward?

Wendy Cutler: Well, thanks. I think my takeaway would be that the economic deliverables were pretty modest, and frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot of urgency to them either. Now, as you mentioned, Neil, leading into the actual summit meeting, both sides had agreed on a two-month extension of the trade truce. That was actually much shorter than Ambassador Greer had been talking about, and I think this is a recognition on the U.S. side that shorter extensions could provide some leverage to the U.S. to get China to live up to its commitments with respect to agricultural purchases, but also with respect to resuming full shipments of critical minerals and magnets. And so we’ll have to see how this plays out over the next two months, but I would expect the U.S. to use these two months to really try and put the pressure on China. The question is really how much leverage do they have here? Another outcome we focused on is this tariff reduction package, $30 billion each way of tariffs that will be reduced to the MFN level for each side, which should help facilitate trade in these non-sensitive products. But here again, you know the levels are so low compared to our overall trade, and frankly, more and more of our trade is falling into the sensitive basket. I would also note that before these tariff reductions can even come into place, both sides will need to go through their domestic procedures. For the U.S., I think this means that we’ll go out for public comment and get comments in and consider them. So this may be a month or two before these tariff reductions can even take place, and then finally, I would just note that I had expected we’d see some big agricultural package announcement along the lines of what Kevin was hinting at—that this is very important for the president—but it does seem that China is way behind in its non-soybean agricultural purchases. The U.S. had announced last spring that China had agreed to $17 billion of additional agricultural purchases, and there’s not a lot of signs that these purchases are moving robustly. Also, under the Board of Trade, the two sides announced a working group on agriculture, and my view is: a working group? We know what the issues are, we know what the problems are, and so I would have expected that they could have announced some real concrete outcomes to deal with some of these non-tariff measures, whether they’re with respect to registration of plants or specific product standards, etc. So let me leave it there.

Neil Thomas: Just a quick follow-up there. Given those issues you raised, what do you think is possible for negotiations before January the 10th, this new deadline? I mean, what’s the next deal going to look like, if indeed you think there could be one?

Wendy Cutler: Yeah. So my view is the deal is going to have to involve resumed shipments of critical minerals and magnets where the U.S. feels that China is living up to that obligation, plus additional announcements by China of agricultural purchases. I didn’t even mention coal purchases, which were announced by the U.S. this week. China’s silent on that. Will we see those purchases be fulfilled? So again, I think China has some homework to do when it goes home.

Neil Thomas: We’ve also talked a lot about critical minerals already, and you know one of the reasons why critical minerals are so central and so important is the role that they play in, amongst many other supply chains, supply chains for chips that are driving the AI revolution, which is driving the U.S. economy and stock market more broadly right now. So I want to turn to Paul now to get your thoughts on the AI dynamics at the Trump-Xi summit, and we saw President Xi repeatedly emphasize AI safety and the importance of keeping AI under human control, even proposing that the U.S. and China jointly manage the risks of AI being misused or used by malign actors. But we’ve seen at the same time President Trump emphasize that the most important thing to do is win the AI race, and there didn’t seem to be a meeting of minds on this, despite the announcement of a U.S.-China AI dialogue. So I’m curious as to whether you think there’s enough overlap between the two presidents’ approaches to support an AI dialogue or even AI cooperation that actually becomes more meaningful over time. Where do you think we’re at with that?

Paul Triolo: Thanks, Neil. Great question. So, look, I think this is one of the toughest questions that we’re dealing with here. Both governments have never really dealt with this issue of how to govern AI models domestically. It’s a new issue, so having a dialogue on this at the government-to-government level is really complicated. This is one of the most complex issues that I think any governments have ever dealt with at the bilateral level. So I think it’s important to note a couple things. One is that the two governments have sort of been going in different directions here, particularly since July. Xi raised this issue of AI safety, for example, at the World AI Conference that I attended, and it’s a big issue because Trump has not really raised this issue of AI safety. I was there when Max Tegmark, who’s a big proponent of AI safety, he said he could have written Xi’s comments at the summit here. So it’s a big deal here. At the same time, you have the leader of an AI superpower making comments about AI safety that are important, while Trump has said nothing on this issue, and he’s continued to use the language of AI dominance, winning the race. He keeps repeating, you know, whoever wins superintelligence wins. So that’s really important to note. Then in early May, both sides were definitely concerned enough about the AI issue that they agreed to these talks about AI governance of frontier models. And this was at a time when the U.S. rhetoric was still around the idea that regulation is not needed, and so the sort of contradiction here is the U.S. has agreed to these talks with China, and many believe that these should be a prelude to having some level of AI governance at the international level. But just last week, OSTP Director Michael Kratsios again reiterated this idea that the U.S. government does not want any international governance of AI. So you have this very complicated situation where the industry itself and many of the leading AI researchers, including people like Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, are calling for the government to develop the capacity to regulate this sector and are putting pressure on the Trump administration to do this. Under the Biden administration, there was probably going to be, for example, development of a government regulatory body to oversee the sector, and now, of course, we have the influence of the tech industry. People like David Sacks, who are pushing for light regulation of the industry, and others, including you know the developers of AI themselves, who are saying the government should regulate this. In China, we have a similar dynamic where the government has some basic controls on AI, but really hasn’t regulated the industry heavily, and particularly in those areas that are of highest concern, like cybersecurity and biosecurity. So, as the two sides prepare for this dialogue, which we’ll see in two months now in Shenzhen, the next two months are going to be critical to see, you know, what the agenda is. I agree with Kevin. This is not a negotiation yet. This is just a discussion about the scope of these talks. Eventually, at some point, I think there’s hope that there could be some agreement between the U.S. and China on sort of basic hygiene around frontier AI models. But before that can happen, both countries need to get their own houses in order here, and probably over the next two months we’ll see, for example, a U.S. move to set up a so-called self-regulatory organization around AI that’s under much discussion within the administration, and we’ll probably see a similar move on the part of China because really, you know, having Secretary Bessent and Vice Premier He Lifeng as the leads on AI may not be the optimal arrangement for achieving the best outcomes here because both of those individuals have full-time jobs, and this really requires a long-term, focused commitment to determining what the government role is going to be around AI safety and how both governments can agree on some baseline going forward because the industry is calling for this and the urgency around this issue in the wake of the Hugging Face/OpenAI incident involving swarms of agents hacking various parts of the internet has only increased the urgency around this issue. So it’s great that the two sides are having a dialogue, but the structural issues on both sides have to be resolved before I think we can make progress on this.

Neil Thomas: Thank you, Paul. Fantastic analysis. Obviously, a precondition for having these not negotiations but discussions is people-to-people exchanges between the U.S. and China, which obviously during the COVID era were themselves in question, and there’s still you know lingering security and other concerns there. As part of Xi’s visit, he announced that China will invite 100,000 young Americans to study and participate in exchanges in China over the next five years. It’s an increase from a previous goal of 50,000 that he announced the last time he was in the United States, I think. So I want to ask you, Amy, how significant do you think that commitment is, and what would need to happen on both sides of the Pacific for it to actually translate into a genuine rebuilding of people-to-people ties? And why do these matter for the future of U.S.-China relations?

Amy Celico: Well, great to be with everybody. And just to answer the last part of that question, Neil: as we just heard from Kevin, Wendy, and Paul, it is so difficult to make incremental progress on political, trade, and technology issues in the overall relationship. We really do want to be able to rely on this foundation that has long existed between the U.S. and China of scholarly and research exchanges, athletic exchanges, civil society, and public policy discussions at the Track 1.5 and Track 2 levels. They’re so important to undergird a relationship that’s facing so much tension, and so in that spirit, you know, both President Trump and President Xi during the visit talked about the important history that the United States and China have of cooperation together. What was unfortunate, I think, was that the visit didn’t go far enough. They were mainly talking about history rather than the here and now and the things that are necessary to continue to promote those same levels of exchange in the future. I was in the room when President Xi announced in San Francisco the goal of welcoming 50,000 Americans, young Americans, to visit China, and China announced within five years that they had met that goal. His announcement in Washington last week was that China now wants to welcome 100,000 Americans over the next five years to visit China and engage in academic exchange. But we didn’t see much progress during the visit on the foundation needed to do that. So while Schwarzman Scholars is a program that is stronger than ever, starting our 11th year this fall, we have 150 Scholars, 40% of them Americans, and so that is a stake in the ground—a great place for scholarly exchange and learning about China and the world. It gives Americans firsthand experience, but what we didn’t hear about at the summit were more opportunities for programs like that. And so, on the U.S. side, no expansion of, for example, the Fulbright Scholarship Program; no reannouncement of Boren Scholarships; no increase in American institutions setting up operations in China; and no loosening of visa restrictions to welcome Chinese citizens to the United States for scholarly exchange, and so while the talk was positive, we didn’t see enough to actually move the needle to really deal with the fundamental issue that people-to-people exchange tries to deal with, and that is building trust, really developing people in both countries who understand one another, understand the challenges of the relationship, and then can deal with those challenges from a foundation of knowledge, and that’s why we want to see more of this in the future. But I think the exchange between our top leaders, between President Trump and President Xi, has underscored how important that personal relationship is to high-level diplomacy, as are the relationships among trade officials and among officials working on artificial intelligence and law enforcement collaboration. So, at the official level, we are seeing exchange, but again, it’s limited if it isn’t also expanded to more Americans and Chinese having opportunities to really understand one another and grapple with the real challenges in the relationship together.

Neil Thomas: Thank you, Amy. Before we zoom out to some big-picture questions on U.S.-China relations, I want to turn to Kevin for a question that I think has really been overlooked in a lot of the analysis in both Washington and Beijing, which I think is incredibly important. U.S.-China relations do not happen in a vacuum. There’s a whole wider world out there. As a former prime minister of Australia, I’m curious: what do you think this summit looks like from Canberra’s vantage point, but also the vantage points of other regional capitals—Tokyo, Seoul, Manila—especially other U.S. allies and partners. Is it creating reassurance that Trump and Xi can manage the U.S.-China relationship in a stable manner, or is there also anxiety being created that Washington might be reaching agreements or doing deals with Beijing that don’t consult countries in the region?

Kevin Rudd: I think I’ll make my comments, Neil, in two or three levels, one is on the stability question, two is on the Taiwan and geopolitics question, and three is on the whither AI question. And these three sets of considerations will animate capitals differently around the Indo-Pacific and around the world. First, on the stability question, as Winston Churchill once said, “Always better to jaw-jaw than to war-war.” Therefore, the fact that there is a more stable framework and relatively positive personal dynamic between the United States and China, and between the two leaders is generally welcomed. That is, a level of stability at the U.S.-China relationship level is more helpful in other countries navigating what is otherwise normally a binary choice. That is, are you going with Beijing? Are you going to go with Washington? And therefore, this creates some more space for countries around the region and the world to be balanced in their approach to these dynamics. The overall global dynamic, as you know full well from your own experience, Neil, is along these lines. America is the overwhelmingly preferred security partner of countries across the Indo-Pacific, and of course in the Euro-Atlantic. At the same time, China looms as the dominant economic partner, at least as far as trade is concerned, not in terms of investment flows necessarily. That changes from country to country, depending on the historical stock and flow of U.S. FDI, as well as the question of technology flows between China and the United States as well. So at that level, there will be, I think, a level of welcoming of the fact that this relationship is more stable than it was at a time when darts were being thrown on a regular basis between both capitals, if you look back at the history of the last five to 10 years. The second point pushes in the reverse direction, which is on the Taiwan question, and this goes in particular to Japanese sensitivities, but other sensitivities across the rest of the region as well, and that is if U.S. arms supplies continue to be held up in their delivery to Taiwan, and given President Trump’s broader statements about Taiwan following the president’s last visit to China in his famous Bret Baier interview on Fox, where he described Taiwan as 9,500 miles away from the United States, 59 miles away from China. The Taiwanese stole all of our semiconductors, and their leadership really needs to behave better. These remarks have not been seen as enormously positive by Taiwan’s friends, partners, and de facto allies, and therefore the reaction I think in a number of regional capitals, most particularly in Northeast Asia, will be one of continuing anxiety about where the administration finally lands on Taiwan’s strategy in general, arms sales in particular, and furthermore whether Xi Jinping concludes in response to that a strategic window begins to open for himself to take hard-line military action against the island. That’s the second set of points. The third is AI, which affects every country in the world. The reality, Neil, is that this is now a two-horse race. That is, it’s China and the United States, and they are a long way ahead. I saw a wonderful illustration of this the other day, which has a race meet around an athletic track with Team America, with you know five major companies out front with both OpenAI and Anthropic at the head of the American race, with Microsoft, Meta, and Google coming up in the middle of the field, and then you’ve got the Red Four on the other side of the athletic field with Zhipu AI and of course DeepSeek and Huawei and ByteDance also struggling towards the finish line. That’s kind of the reality, of course. In this wonderful cartoon, just ahead of the straining and competing athletes was a giant chasm they’re all about to roll into, which is called an AI crisis brought about by an AI incident through agentic AI beginning to act autonomously against the infrastructures of both countries without the authorization of either state or anyone in particular. So, what’s the view from the lens of the rest of Asia and the rest of the world on basic questions of a guardrail which could reduce the risk of a major attack by a third party, a rogue actor, a rogue state, or by a rogue agent—that is, an autonomously performing AI agent—the anxiety from the rest of the world is that no form of global governance at this stage will substitute for a bilateral protocol between Beijing and the United States on reducing the risk of any of these three sets of crises breaking out into the real infrastructure world. And so, if all that sounds too abstract, could an AI agent take out your water supply system? Could it take out your power supply system? Could it penetrate and take control of data in your military infrastructure? Could you begin to lose political control of your system through the sudden circulation of highly sensitive material about, for example, the Chinese leadership internally? And how does that impact third countries in terms of parallel considerations for themselves? That’s the third set of concerns, and those are ongoing until we see whether there is form and substance or meat and potatoes when it comes to the AI track, which has been opened between He Lifeng and Scott Bessent, back to you.

Neil Thomas: Fantastic, thank you, Kevin. Paul, I wonder if you want to come in on that AI risk scenario that Kevin was mentioning, given your expertise here. And do you see that as something that could bring the U.S. and China together and kind of force action on this issue, as Kevin was intimating, or what’s your kind of reaction to the way forward here?

Paul Triolo: Yeah, I agree with Kevin on all points here. I think the challenge, as I tried to raise earlier, is that you know we’re in this crazy situation where now that everybody understands the threats, the potential threats from advanced AI, from things like swarms of agents, and from the misuse of advanced models by non-state actors. We’re still in a situation where both countries are still some ways from being able to put in place clear regulatory guardrails around the release of advanced models in their own countries, and so I think the sense of urgency is good because I think that’s what’s driven this whole agreement between the two countries, which wasn’t there two years ago when some initial AI discussions were mooted, but it doesn’t make it any easier because now both countries are scrambling to get their head around this issue in the midst of a much more complicated situation, right? Where any day now we could have an incident come to light where agents have gone rogue, or malicious actors are trying to use these capabilities for cyber- or bio-related reasons here. So that gives urgency, but it doesn’t make the discussions any easier. I think the incident reporting mechanism that was mooted by Secretary Bessent is really a good place to start here, and that’s something that you can imagine if the OpenAI agents had hacked into a Chinese website or Chinese critical infrastructure, how would that have been handled by both governments, right? There’s no real mechanism for that, so I think that’s a great start, but it’s still not easy to do that because in both countries there still isn’t a robust incident reporting mechanism between the leading AI labs, for example, and the government, as we saw quite clearly with the OpenAI and Hugging Face incident, where you know the incident reporting was Hugging Face going to the media and saying, “Look, we’ve been hacked by swarms of agents,” and then OpenAI figuring out that it was their own agents. They weren’t aware of that when Hugging Face went public with this. So I think that, if anything, the impetus is there now to begin with a basic incident reporting mechanism, and do that first domestically, and then bilaterally, and then build on that. The issue of you know how to deal with non-state actors’ access to these capabilities is going to become more salient. But that will again require a really strong regulatory structure developed in both countries. It’s almost criminal in my mind that, for example, the Chinese government has not mandated that its leading AI labs have safety testing teams, which is a huge issue. All the U.S. labs—it’s not mandatory—but they’ve all developed very good internal capabilities to at least test these models. They’re not perfect, obviously, as we’ve seen, but they’ve taken these issues very seriously. But in China, probably only Zhipu AI and Alibaba, for example, have really robust safety testing teams, and then the complication is that all the labs in China are short of compute to devote to AI safety because of U.S. export controls. Getting back to Kevin’s original statement there, so I think this issue needs to be on the table: how does the U.S. regulate compute in an era where advanced compute is needed to do AI safety testing? I’ve advocated for a complete rethink of the U.S. technology control policy that’s fit for the age of superintelligent agentic AI. This is something that I think is critical, and we’re not quite there yet. But I think I agree with Kevin that these issues are all on the table. What might be the real trigger is a big event, you know, major event where we do have an incident where we have damage to infrastructure or loss of life that then really focuses governments in both capitals to really get moving on this.

Neil Thomas: We just saw today that OpenAI has delayed the launch of its most recent model because of safety concerns. So hopefully, this can be a subject of robust discussions in the next meeting of the U.S.-China AI dialogue. Looks like it’s going to happen in Shenzhen within the next couple of months. There’s obviously so much to talk about here. We are getting close to time, so I just want to turn to Wendy, then Amy, then back to Paul and Kevin for a couple of minutes on your thoughts—however you want to take it—on what I think is really the big strategic question hanging over the Trump-Xi summit and the APEC and G20 meetings that are coming over the next couple of months. That would produce, I think, an all-time record of four face-to-face meetings between the U.S. and Chinese presidents in one calendar year. My question is: Do you see this as the beginning of a more durable, long-term framework for managing U.S.-China competition, or do you think the current stability is more of a temporary situation that is likely to eventually give way to renewed confrontation? So start with you, Wendy. Just a minute or two each. Yeah.

Wendy Cutler: So you know, in my view, this truce is very fragile, and I think we saw that even in the lead-up to this current meeting, where each side is just announcing measures against the other side, but not crossing the line, right, and so I think they’re testing each other. So even with this truce, we’re seeing tension and each side taking measures. Second, there’s always the unexpected, and we’ve seen that in the past—some development that could totally blow up the relationship. But what also concerns me is that if China is not living up to its commitments under this truce, then that’s going to put increasing pressure on the U.S. to respond. The Trump administration is not shy about taking on other countries when they’re not living up to their obligations. But here, it’s just more complicated because of China’s hold on critical minerals, but you know I think for the remainder of the year we’re okay because there’ll be two more meetings between the leaders and that will help keep tensions from boiling too high, but I worry about next year and particularly after the midterm elections when Congress may also get more active on this front and give legislation to the president to sign, which could be considerably more hard-line than the president would like to pursue.

Neil Thomas: Thank you, Wendy. Amy, your thoughts?

Amy Celico: Yeah, I agree. I don’t see anything durable coming out of what we’ve experienced so far. But of course, I think given potentially two more opportunities for engagement this year alone, that does give us some short-term stability that I hope we can take advantage of with the next two meetings to really put some specificity again around issues that aren’t as contentious, and I really do put the bucket of issues around people-to-people exchange there because the goal of people-to-people exchange is to take out this over-securitization of every aspect of the bilateral relationship, and remind people in both countries that it’s in our national interest to understand one another, and you can only do that by bringing people together in real ways. And so, we have two more opportunities this year to put more specificity around programs that already exist, Schwarzman Scholars again really does prepare the next generation of young people to disagree with one another through really being together, learning about China, about political and cultural differences, and then applying it in whatever you do. We need more of that, and I do think two more meetings this year give us an opportunity for the U.S. and China to put some meat on the bones of how we can engage with one another, not just on the difficult issues, but on the ones that undergird the relationship.

Neil Thomas: Great, thank you, Amy. Paul, your quick thoughts, and then sure, Kevin, give you the last word.

Paul Triolo: Yeah, just a couple things quickly. I think this “constructive, strategic, stable” formulation is really fragile. I agree with Wendy. On the constructive side, there was no Chinese business delegation at the White House, including Chinese AI and EV CEOs that had been mooted as participating, and so on the strategic side, the issue really is this extension of Busan and the rare earth and critical minerals issue that both Kevin and Wendy have stressed here, and the Chinese view is that if that extension is not to the end of the Trump administration, then what is strategic about it? Where is the strategic angle here, and where is the stability? If we’re going to be revisiting this every so often, my view on the rare earth issue is a little more nuanced and complicated. China is definitely issuing licenses, for example. We work with these issues every day, so we see things pretty close up. I think Bessent and Greer have even said that something like two-thirds of the licenses are being issued. Are there delays? Yes, MOFCOM is very focused on potential for diversion and stockpiling, and is requiring a lot of documentation around this. But the big issue I think that people are hung up on is licenses for military and defense-industrial end users, and there, China is not letting up on that. There have been zero licenses issued in that area. I think the Trump administration is under the assumption that China would return to the flows of rare earths and critical minerals and magnets that existed before April 2025. But the Chinese government does not believe that’s what it agreed to in Busan. And then finally, I think that as we saw today with Ambassador Perdue, the U.S. side is very focused on the potential for the October 2025 rare earth measures going into effect. Those have extraterritorial and de minimis provisions, which would be a huge disruption to the industry, and also include expansion of controls over things like erbium, which is critical for fiber optic communication. And then Perdue is linking these with State Council Decrees No. 834 and 835, which I think is a misread. He’s associating those with a sort of broader Chinese effort to use and escalate on rare earths. Those decrees, I don’t think, really have anything to do with rare earths. They’re part of a broader set of legal measures that Beijing has put in place to use in case it needs to, but there’s a lot of obsession within the Trump administration about those measures as escalatory and actually violating the Busan agreement. So I think in the next two months there need to be discussions about the rare earth licensing issue and how to deal with things like the State Council Decrees No. 834 and 835 and how to think about those because I think there are misconceptions on both sides about what was agreed to and what was not agreed to, and they’re going to have to come to some agreement on this. Otherwise, this issue is going to continue to dog the relationship. It dominated every trade discussion last year, and it has continued to dominate the discussion behind the scenes. Not so much front and center at the summit, but definitely behind the scenes, and, as I say, we’re living this every day with our clients trying to understand where China is and where the U.S. is, and finally, there are no alternatives to these materials coming online anytime soon. And so U.S. companies across many sectors are going to need to maintain access to these materials, particularly for semiconductors and autos.

Neil Thomas: Thank you, Paul. Over to you, Kevin.

Kevin Rudd: One minute after the hour, I will conclude with three haiku points. One, this will be fragile because strategic competition is the operational strategy of both sides in terms of which country emerges as the dominant power in the Indo-Pacific in the 21st century and globally. The question is whether it’s managed strategic competition or unmanaged strategic competition on the way through. Two, there is the danger of Chinese overreach, as I indicated in my earlier remarks, both on trade in general, agricultural trade in particular, and most specifically of all, critical minerals, rare earths, and magnets, and the risk of that inviting, in fact, the sort of reaction against the Chinese system that we saw in Trump 1.0 once we got through the midpoint of that administration. And three, AI: the Chinese system, for the reasons which Paul just referred to, given the absence of its own testing protocols in its labs on its own frontier models, needs to buckle up, as do the rest of us, for a real-world incident of an order of magnitude between now and the end of the year, perhaps before these leaders meet again, either in Shenzhen, China’s AI capital, or at Mar-a-Lago. I’ll leave my comments there and say goodbye to everybody.

Neil Thomas: Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Wendy. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Paul. And thank you, everyone, for joining us.

Article published in collaboration with ChinaFile

On September 24, U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the White House for their second summit of the year. The meeting advanced new mechanisms on trade and investment, and launched the U.S.-China bilateral dialogue on artificial intelligence, while leaving many of the relationship’s most difficult questions—from Taiwan to technology competition—unresolved.

We asked experts to assess what the summit actually changed, what remains unsettled, and what to watch next.

—Jennifer Choo

Managing the U.S.-China Relationship without Remaking It

Neil Thomas

Was the Trump-Xi summit a success? Despite all the pomp and circumstance of the state visit, the deliverables announced by the two sides were partial and circumscribed. But how much that matters depends on what you think is the point of meetings between the two presidents.

Is it to maintain diplomatic stability between China and the United States? Beijing and Washington agreed to elevate their bilateral ambitions by building a “constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of respect, fairness, and reciprocity.” Both Trump and Xi confirmed their intention to attend November’s APEC summit in Shenzhen and December’s G20 summit in Miami, setting the stage for a record four presidential meetings this year. But the trade truce was extended only by two months, meaning that these meetings will likely focus on working out how to extend the status quo.

Is it to strengthen economic ties between the two countries? The two governments “operationalized” a Board of Trade, under which they agreed to pursue tariff reductions on $30 billion of imports in each direction. They also established a Board of Investment intended to identify investment opportunities and address investment between the two countries. The White House also said China would import at least 10 million tons of U.S. coal in both 2027 and 2028, but Beijing did not publicly confirm this commitment.

Is it to work together on global challenges? Trump and Xi agreed to establish a U.S.-China dialogue on what Trump now calls “super intelligence” and what Xi will almost certainly continue to call “artificial intelligence.” But the Chinese president’s proactive call to “jointly guard against artificial intelligence being misused or maliciously used” sits uneasily alongside Trump’s insistence that the United States should not “in any way hinder or stifle the growth” of the technology. The two leaders also discussed Iran, Russia, and North Korea, although what scant public comments emerged largely reiterated existing positions.

Is it to resolve bilateral tensions and reduce the risk of conflict over geopolitical flashpoints? White House statements that Trump “advocated for” arms-control talks and that the two sides “continue to work on” Chinese supplies of rare earths suggest limited progress on two longstanding disputes. Xi was unusually explicit in saying that he expected Washington to “oppose” Taiwan independence, but the absence of any Taiwan-related item from either side’s list of summit outcomes indicates that this pressure produced no publicly announced change in U.S. policy.

Optimists argue that Trump and Xi are developing a personal chemistry that could help underpin deeper working-level cooperation. That may prove especially useful in managing the profound uncertainties and acute risks surrounding AI and in advancing cooperation in relatively low-stakes areas such as educational exchanges and public health. But presidential pageantry will not alter Xi’s commitment to expanding China’s international leadership or his longstanding vision of China as a self-reliant industrial power with a commanding position in global manufacturing and critical supply chains. Any economic concessions Beijing offers are therefore likely to remain bounded by Xi’s overriding objective of strengthening China’s own technological capabilities and geoeconomic leverage.

Chinese state media reveled in the respect afforded their president during the state visit. People’s Daily framed the trip through the lens of “great changes unseen in a century,” a phrase Xi has used since the first Trump administration to describe a transformation in the international balance of power. The concept reflects his assessment that relative U.S. power is declining and the Western-led international order is fragmenting—a transformation that creates risks of geopolitical instability and external pressure on China, but also unique opportunities for Beijing to expand its international influence.

Trump and Xi may be getting better at managing U.S.-China competition precisely because both now recognize how little they can do to change the relationship’s underlying dynamics. Xi’s longstanding approach has been to bolster China’s power while avoiding conflict with the United States. The question now is how effectively Washington can mobilize America’s economy, society, and international partners to strengthen its own competitive advantages.

Buying Time for the Harder Economic Bargain

Lizzi Lee

Leadership summits play an outsized role in U.S.-China relations, and by that measure, the latest talks were substantive. Yes, much of what transpired was pageantry, and the deliverables were thin—more about setting up next steps than settling anything—but the process itself matters, especially on tough issues like AI safety, trade, and export controls. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng agreed to build out an AI dialogue, with the next round expected in roughly two months in Shenzhen, while the United States proposed a notification mechanism for AI incidents that rise to the level of national-security threats. The two sides also moved toward operationalizing tariff reductions for non-sensitive goods. It is hard to tell how many of the mechanisms discussed are just big-picture ideas and how concrete the long-term thinking behind them is. The more concrete aspects of the deliverables on purchases and trade show where the low-hanging fruit lies: removing or lowering barriers around non-sensitive goods where both sides have obvious common interests.

The harder task starts immediately afterward, in the nitty-gritty of tech competition and strategic chokepoints at the intersection of economic and national security, with no easy solutions. AI is the clearest example. The U.S. compute advantage is real, and it constrains China. And China’s grievances over U.S. export controls are not merely rhetorical—its counter-leverage over rare-earths has imposed real costs on the United States and others, and those effects can be even more immediate. Both sides wield enormous leverage, and neither side is shy about flexing its muscles. Just before the summit, some Chinese suppliers reportedly refused to make shipments to U.S. customers; earlier disruptions had already forced auto factories and other key industrial outlets, globally, to halt production. Imagine if this happens repeatedly, for prolonged periods, and at a larger scale.

In the near term, China is getting several things it has wanted from this process: a blessing from U.S. leadership to stabilize relations, and greater predictability for at least the next few months.

The next step requires choices that are much harder, economically and politically. Domestic politics on both sides make those choices harder still. In China, the run-up to the 2027 Party Congress is already generating bureaucratic stalling: local and rank-and-file officials simply waiting out the leadership transition because they don’t know who will be in charge, and the Politburo’s intensifying focus on Party discipline and anti-corruption can make bureaucrats default to inaction—better to do nothing than to be wrong. In Washington, the November 3 midterm elections set their own near-term political clock. Both Xi and Trump therefore have strong incentives to bank small, visible wins now and defer the hardest structural bargains to later.

For China, the biggest unresolved issue is economic rebalancing. China’s own economy still needs a deeper shift toward domestic demand and consumption. The U.S.-China bilateral relationship needs a more sustainable rebalancing on trade and investment, especially on Chinese technology inputs, which are critical for accelerating the U.S.’ own reindustrialization and revitalization after years of hollowing out. Crafting that broader relationship in a way that is consistent with both sides’ self-interest would require serious and intense negotiation and coordination below the leadership level. It is precisely the kind of long-term work that can easily be swamped by short-term political goals.

That is why the two-month extension of the Busan trade truce, from November 10 to January 10, though very short, is good news. It carries the détente through APEC in Shenzhen and the G20 in Miami, effectively creating two natural leadership-level check-in points where Trump and Xi could potentially meet again and further extend the truce. Repeated leadership summits can generate the political momentum to propel some movement down the bureaucratic ladder that otherwise tends to stall.

Can the Board of Trade Mechanism Work?

Scott Shaw

Specific outcomes remain limited, but most analysts agree that the Board of Trade structure has made more progress than skeptics expected. Initial reports indicate that concrete agreements are now in place to introduce “managed trade” between the two countries. Certain product sectors, for example, are expected to receive zero or minimal tariffs. Given the current leadership-level structure of Board of Trade discussions, it remains unclear whether the framework can effectively incorporate the broad range of commercial disputes between the world’s two largest economies. Even so, the Board of Trade may prove to be one of the few institutional outcomes to endure beyond the current talks. As I have argued, a continuing, leadership-led trade framework fills an important gap.

The separate Board of Investment was announced as a new deliverable but produced no outcomes at this summit. Moreover, the Chinese statements continue to refer to the Board of Investment’s being under the “economic and trade consultation mechanism,” which would seem to indicate that the two sides have not yet agreed to a fully independent Board of Investment.

Despite the positive outcomes associated with the Board of Trade, its long-term success will depend on progress toward a broader approach to managing the trade relationship. Cabinet-level and vice premier-led discussions have produced important initial breakthroughs after a lengthy hiatus in high-level engagement. Going forward, rather than limiting progress to a small number of high-profile matters, sub-cabinet-level leadership will be necessary to address the multitude of detailed commercial issues facing both governments on an ongoing basis.

Nevertheless, the current high-level discussions play a vital role for the business community and for trade officials in both countries as they navigate an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape. The symbolism of the Board of Trade consensus, which designates $30 billion in managed-trade sectors for each side, fulfills an important objective by demonstrating that the two governments can still reach basic agreements and cooperate in areas of mutual interest. The Board of Investment, once fully authorized and commenced, will likely face a more difficult path toward a comparable outcome given the high-degree of sensitivity around investment issues.

The Board of Trade should also include senior representatives from a wider range of relevant government agencies. This is because even after the most sensitive high-level issues begin to get resolved, numerous practical trade-related challenges will remain that hamper the bilateral commercial relationship. These issues can only be addressed through broader interagency participation and sustained engagement from both governments. Following years of limited staff-level connectivity, trust must be rebuilt by expanding the scope of discussions to include these concerns and by increasing staff-level engagement to work toward resolving the most difficult issues.

To support this effort, either the Board of Trade or an alternative mechanism should be clearly designated as the forum through which companies can raise concerns, with a well-defined scope of issues for consideration. In this regard, the U.S. Trade Representative appropriately sought stakeholder, including company, input on the Board of Trade structure. For the Board of Investment to succeed, both governments will need to provide similar support as they work to further develop a clearly defined mandate and interagency consensus around its objectives.

What the Trump-Xi Summit Did for AI Safety

Alvin Wang Graylin

The most consequential line from this week’s summit sits near the bottom of the White House fact sheet: Washington and Beijing launched a U.S.-China Super Intelligence Dialogue, set the next exchange to take place by November 2026, and agreed to build a bilateral channel for AI incidents. The AI consultations discussed at the May summit in Beijing were never formalized, so a name, a deadline, and a line to call are real progress.

That follow-through is what separates this round from Lima in 2024, where Joe Biden and Xi Jinping agreed that humans must control nuclear launch decisions but let the AI dialogue they had started go dormant after a single meeting. With frontier capabilities compounding every few months, another quiet death would be expensive.

The talks survived a rough run-up: Beijing called Dario Amodei’s “We Must Pace the Frontier“ essay “fearmongering,” and Senate Democrats used Xi’s arrival to push three bills tightening chip export controls. According to the Chinese readout, Xi said the two countries “may have competition, but they may cooperate even more,” urged both “to draw on each other’s strengths, not guard against each other,” and proposed dialogue to “jointly prevent the misuse and abuse of AI.” Trump praised a friendship “built on mutual respect“ and, in the Chinese account, said AI “concerns the future of humanity.”

The rest of the package lowers the temperature AI cooperation depends on. The new Board of Trade agreed on better tariff treatment for $30 billion of goods in each direction, a Board of Investment now exists, and China tightened controls on fentanyl precursors.

The seating chart carried its own message. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, AMD’s Lisa Su, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Elon Musk sat at the head table. Sam Altman wasn’t at the table and Dario Amodei was absent all together. In part, this simply reflects who does business in China, but I also read it as the U.S. administration’s tilt toward chips and manufacturing, which generate durable jobs and returns, over frontier labs whose models are commoditizing. China has focused on hard goods and manufacturing for decades, and Washington may be reconverging on that priority.

The biggest gap is alignment. Trump has called fears about AI catastrophe a “hoax,” and the readouts center on misuse by bad actors, which is the right near-term priority because small, cheap models in non-state hands threaten both countries equally. The possibility that AI systems could slip beyond human control still needs its own expert track, and Beijing looks ready: China’s TC260 standards body released version 3.0 of its AI safety framework, covering the risk of systems’ pursuing goals their developers never intended or replicating themselves to avoid being shut down. That rebuts critics who claim China won’t regulate its labs or take AI safety seriously.

This summit delivered two of the proposals in my Quincy Institute brief: a standing dialogue with a date and an agreed incident channel. November, when both leaders are due at APEC in Shenzhen, should be used to fill in the missing pieces, including a shared format for reporting incidents with technical staff on both ends, common definitions of dangerous capabilities, the four redlines both capitals already accept (no AI-initiated nuclear launch, no uncontrolled self-replication, no AI attacks on civilian infrastructure, no bioweapons uplift), and third-party testing of major new models released by both sides.

Ping-pong gave two wary publics a shared story in the 1970s, and two pandas’ arrival at the Atlanta Zoo may do the same now. No single meeting solves AI safety, but this one built a much-needed foundation of greater trust and respect between the two leaders and put a date on the calendar before the first serious crisis. I’ve seen some call the summit a “nothingburger,” but it gave me reason for hope.

Did “Constructive Strategic Stability” Acquire Operational Content?

Lyle J Morris

Contrary to the low expectations heading into the Trump-Xi summit, the meeting actually produced an impressive set of working channels that breathed new life into the “constructive strategic stability” framework. The two governments created new economic working groups, launched a new AI technology dialogue, and, according to Beijing, committed to further military crisis management. While these mechanisms will not resolve the underlying disputes in U.S.-China relations, they give officials ways to manage them below the leader-level and provide positive momentum to iron out differences in the years ahead.

The clearest progress came in economic relations. The White House said the leaders “operationalized” the Boards of Trade and Investment chartered at their May summit in Beijing. The Board of Trade produced “recommendations” for more favorable tariff treatment covering $30 billion in nonsensitive goods in each direction and launched a working group on agricultural market access. The Board of Investment now offers a structured channel to discuss opportunities and impediments.

Beijing’s readout likewise endorsed the boards, the tariff arrangement, and implementation of the two economic teams’ consultations. This matters because the boards move trade disputes into standing institutions where officials can pursue specific decisions and litigate disputes between presidential meetings. The tariff recommendations still require follow-through, but the machinery for progress is now in place to alleviate a major irritant in the relationship.

The summit also opened a channel for managing emerging technology risks. Both readouts announced a bilateral dialogue on the risks and benefits of advanced AI, with another exchange planned to occur by November 2026, plus a communication channel for related incidents. Despite Donald Trump claiming that a consensus had been reached on terminology, Beijing called it an “AI Dialogue,” while Washington calls it a “Super Intelligence Dialogue” in their respective readouts. That discrepancy will need clarification, but agreement on a next meeting and an incident channel is more consequential than agreement on a label.

Finally, military-to-military channels also appear to have been agreed to. China’s readout said the two militaries agreed to “conclude” a memorandum of understanding on crisis communication and prevention “as soon as possible.” Curiously, the White House fact sheet does not mention the development. Washington, for its part, says Trump advocated for trilateral arms control talks with China and Russia, which the Chinese side did not mention. Neither readout described a new arrangement for Taiwan, the issue most likely to test the framework in a crisis.

Given all the pessimism that the United States and China could not operationalize their new framework, there is significant cause for optimism. The two leaders produced a patchwork of institutions with defined subjects, near-term deliverables, and crisis mitigation mechanisms in the economic, technology and military domains. Of course, their success will be measured by whether these institutions yield results. But early returns suggest that the summit gave strategic stability meaningful structure.

Taiwan Tests the Terms of Stability

Simona Grano

The September 24 Trump-Xi summit did not produce a new Taiwan arrangement, but that does not mean Taiwan was unaffected. The more consequential change is in how Taiwan is being incorporated into the management of U.S.-China relations: Beijing has increasingly succeeded in making Washington’s handling of Taiwan a foundation of what it calls “strategic stability” between the two powers—and Washington under Trump has allowed that connection to become more explicit.

The summit itself illustrates the point. In China’s readout, Xi urged Trump to “oppose” Taiwan independence and “handle the Taiwan question with caution,” maintaining that this would lay a “solid foundation” for strategic cooperation and bilateral relations. The White House has not issued a corresponding account indicating any change in U.S. Taiwan policy, and Trump did not answer reporters when asked whether Taiwan had been discussed. In other words, there was no new agreement, no new U.S. commitment to Beijing’s preferences, and no formal alteration of Washington’s longstanding policy. However, the difference in framing still matters since Beijing is explicitly presenting U.S. handling of Taiwan as part of the preconditions for stable U.S.-China relations.

The more important shift actually predates the summit. In May, Trump said he had discussed Taiwan arms sales with Xi and described the pending U.S. $14 billion package as “a very good negotiating chip.” This was more than unusual rhetoric given that previous U.S. administrations had long maintained a deliberate practice of not consulting Beijing on specific arms sales to Taiwan, reflected in the “Six Assurances” issued under President Reagan in 1982. Trump’s willingness to discuss the sales directly with Xi therefore departed from longstanding U.S. practice.The package continues to remain delayed, although U.S. officials have also cited weapons-production constraints as a reason, and Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister said after the summit that Taipei expects the sale to proceed.

For Taiwan, the main issue is therefore not simply whether one weapons package is approved but—much more importantly—whether Taiwanese security is rapidly becoming a bargaining variable in the broader U.S.-China relationship. That perception matters because deterrence depends not only on weapons but also on confidence in the political framework behind them. A survey released just before the summit found that 47 percent of Taiwanese respondents lacked confidence that the United States would continue military assistance and arms sales to Taiwan, compared with 44 percent who expressed confidence.

Beijing has not shown restraint since the summit: Taiwan’s defense ministry reported continued PLA aircraft and naval activity around the island on September 24-25. At the same time, Taiwan’s government has emphasized continued close communication with Washington and rejected Beijing’s claim that Taiwan’s future can be determined by China.

The summit therefore changed little in Taiwan’s formal status or in U.S. policy, but it reinforced a more important dynamic: Beijing is increasingly seeking to make U.S. handling of Taiwan a condition for broader U.S.-China stability. For Taipei, that may ultimately be significantly more important and consequential than what was—or was not—said in the room.

A Narrow Opening on Health

Joan Kaufman

Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s summit in Washington was more pomp than substance, and with no further discussion of critical health issues of mutual concern.

The White House’s official fact sheet following the summit led with progress on the fentanyl issue, a welcome development. China’s exports of that narcotic drug’s precursors has been a thorn in the side of U.S.-China relations. Prior to the summit, China announced expanded export controls on those precursors and will now require permits for exporting them to North America. Controls now extend to the “scheduling of orphines, a class of deadly drugs,” such as cychlorphine, that have threatened recent declines in U.S. drug overdose deaths. Despite declining 14 percent from 2024, there were an estimated 70,000 drug overdoses in 2025. The U.S. “strongly encouraging the permanent scheduling of these and other substances and chemicals to help stem the flow of illicit precursors to dangerous narcoterrorists in North America.” The fact sheet also noted that China had arrested 21 Chinese citizens illegally manufacturing and distributing drug precursors, an indication, albeit a limited one, of China’s intention to demonstrate it takes this issue seriously.

However, an opportunity was missed to advance other areas of health cooperation, notably pandemic prevention and cancer collaboration.

Collaboration on pandemic preparedness for the next emerging pathogen—which in the cases of SARS and Covid-19 originated in China—was not mentioned despite the real threat of another zoonotic spillover. Controversy over Covid’s origins makes this urgent political hot potato difficult to pursue. Cuts to U.S. science funding and international aid further challenge previous efforts and new initiatives in this critical area of mutual concern. At the UN General Assembly meetings in New York last week, the United States rejected a declaration for international collaboration on pandemic preparedness.

China is advancing rapidly in the application of AI to health for drug discovery, already revolutionized by advances in genomics; in improving diagnostics and imaging; and in optimizing clinical trial research for new therapies. Its innovation ecosystem tolerates more financial risk than ours and has led to notable advances in health and biotechnology products and new drugs. It is in the U.S.’s interest to forge ways to benefit from these innovations so more lives can be saved from diseases like cancer, which will kill an estimated 626,140 Americans this year. China’s global dominance in production of active pharmaceutical ingredients and generics makes the U.S. dependent on China for cancer drugs that are no longer profitable to U.S. manufacturers. Some see this as a threat, a chokehold comparable to critical minerals, making it even more urgent to come to agreement on continuing two-way access for life-saving therapies.

There are two more opportunities this year to make progress: APEC in Shenzhen and the G20 in Miami. Xi and Trump are expected to meet again at both. For the sake of our two countries and others attending those summits, let’s hope real collaboration on pressing global health problems are on the agenda and no new pathogen emerges before then.

By Jing Qian, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Center for China Analysis

As we enter the final hours before Presidents Trump and Xi meet in Washington during Xi’s September 23–25 state visit, I think we may need to adjust how we watch U.S.–China summitry.

The era of searching for a “grand bargain” may be behind us. The more realistic question is whether both sides can establish a working equilibrium that makes their domestic political goals achievable.

That brings us back to the language agreed in Beijing in May: a “constructive relationship of strategic stability,” with the critical qualifiers, in Washington’s formulation, of “fairness and reciprocity.”

Beijing is now presenting this not simply as a framework for managing the next summit, but as a possible guide for the relationship for “the next three years and beyond.” Its May formulation described constructive strategic stability as cooperation remaining the mainstay, competition staying within proper limits, differences remaining manageable, and peace remaining the baseline.

The key question now is whether that concept can acquire enough operating substance to guide the relationship.

Where can the two countries identify arrangements that each regards as sufficiently fair and reciprocal, and that therefore make strategic stability more durable?

Against that standard, six things are worth watching.

1. Can Trump–Xi goodwill be translated into lasting mechanisms between the two nations?

Personal diplomacy is critical and matters enormously in both political systems. But personal relationships between leaders are not enough to sustain the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship.

Beijing itself is placing extraordinary weight on the leaders. Chinese official messaging now describes head-of-state diplomacy as both the “compass” and “anchor” of U.S.–China relations.

That makes the institutional question even more important: can strategic direction at the top travel downward through two very different political and bureaucratic systems?

The test is whether leader-level direction produces durable mechanisms: regular economic channels, AI and crisis-management systems, constructive areas of cooperation, implementation processes, and working relationships among the officials who actually manage the relationship.

Interestingly, Beijing is now describing precisely this objective in the economic relationship: moving from “crisis response” toward “institutionalized management.” Chinese official commentary has placed the trade and investment mechanism alongside military, AI, law-enforcement, local-government, business, and Track 1.5 channels as part of a denser network of bilateral mechanisms.

The goal should be to build enough standing machinery that every disagreement does not require leader-level rescue.

That matters as both countries approach major domestic political moments: China’s Fifth Plenum on October 26–29 and the U.S. midterm elections on November 3. The Fifth Plenum dates were formally set this week.

Domestic politics is driving diplomacy nowadays. So the question is whether the two governments can build mechanisms resilient enough to keep operating through domestic political cycles.

2. On economics, look for implementation rather than transformation

Trade will remain important.

Investment may become even more interesting.

But again, I would change the standard by which we judge progress.

Neither side is likely to transform the underlying economic relationship this week.

The more practical question is whether they can make it more predictable and more reciprocal.

And “implementation” itself may be contested: the Chinese readout of the latest Bessent-He talks emphasized “implementing the consensus reached in previous economic and trade consultations.” That raises an important question: not simply what does each side want next?, but what does each side believe the other has already committed to—and has it been implemented?

Can existing tariff arrangements actually be stabilized, now that both sides have more tariff instruments at their disposal?

Can disputes over tariffs and critical minerals be managed without repeatedly escalating into broader confrontation?

Can the emerging trade mechanism be institutionalized in a way that moves economic relations away from repeated crisis management and toward more predictable consultation?

And can the two sides eventually construct investment models in which Chinese capital or technology contributes to American production and employment while legitimate questions involving security, data, ownership, and governance are addressed transparently under U.S. law?

This is where fairness and reciprocity have to become more than diplomatic language.

They need institutional expression—and enough shared understanding of what has actually been agreed to make implementation, as well as measurement of implementation, possible.

3. On AI, can dialogue become a firewall—and quickly?

This may be one of the most consequential areas to watch.

The United States and China will continue competing intensely for technological leadership.

But the risks generated by increasingly powerful AI systems do not respect national borders.

The two sides have agreed to formalize an AI-risk dialogue, with another meeting expected in Shenzhen in roughly two months. The United States has also proposed an AI “incident line” through which the two governments could communicate when serious AI-related safety incidents occur. Beijing has confirmed the broader AI dialogue but has not yet publicly endorsed the specific incident-notification proposal.

That is modest but meaningful progress on building a working mechanism.

One key objective moving forward could be to build a defensive firewall for AI to deal with powerful models already in the hands of rogue actors, and to build mechanisms that help prevent accidents, miscalculations, or uncontrolled interactions between increasingly powerful systems from becoming wider crises.

Over time, that could mean mechanisms for incident notification, crisis communication, human control, and the management of shared risks involving cyber systems, critical infrastructure, biological misuse, and other potentially catastrophic applications.

It may be unrealistic to expect Washington and Beijing to agree to slow technological competition when both regard AI leadership as strategically consequential.

But perhaps this is precisely the point: the two countries do not have to resolve their competition over chips, compute, or technological leadership in order to build defensive mechanisms around risks neither side wants to materialize.

The latest discussions themselves suggest that kind of compartmentalization may be possible: risk communication on one track while competition over chips, compute, and market access continues on another.

Strategic competitors can still build a firewall around the most dangerous risks. And indeed, competition may make those defensive mechanisms more necessary—and more urgent.

4. Taiwan remains the hardest test of strategic stability

There will probably be no convergence on the fundamental political positions surrounding Taiwan.

Indeed, Beijing’s warmer pre-summit language has come alongside an equally explicit reiteration of its political red lines, with Taiwan identified as the most consequential issue in the bilateral relationship.

So this is perhaps the clearest test of what “strategic stability” actually means.

Can both sides maintain their positions and deterrence while reducing the risk of miscalculation, unintended escalation, and misreading of each other’s intentions?

In particular, can Washington maintain deterrence around Taiwan while simultaneously assuring Beijing that its one-China policy is not intended to embolden Taiwan to move toward independence?

Strategic stability does not require agreement—it requires enough understanding and predictability that disagreement does not automatically become crisis.

That requires more than political signaling. It requires defensive mechanisms: reliable military-to-military communication, crisis hotlines, advance notification where possible, clear procedures for managing encounters, and channels that remain open even when political relations deteriorate.

These mechanisms do not resolve the underlying dispute. They help prevent a dangerous incident, miscalculation, or misunderstanding from becoming a wider conflict.

5. Can strategic stability also become constructive?

A relationship organized entirely around managing threats will eventually become defined by threats.

Durable stability therefore needs at least some areas where the two countries can show that interaction can produce affirmative outcomes.

Health may be one of them.

Cancer, rare diseases, early detection, selected clinical and regulatory cooperation, responsible uses of AI in medicine, and AI-related biosecurity risks all offer potential areas for bounded cooperation.

A Chinese discovery that helps cure an American patient is not an American defeat.

An American medicine that saves a Chinese life is not a Chinese defeat.

None of this requires strategic trust.

It requires boundaries, safeguards, and predictability—and, again, fairness and reciprocity.

Perhaps that is also how we begin moving, carefully, beyond unreasonable suspicion.

6. Strategic stability also needs human infrastructure

Government mechanisms are only one layer.

The relationship also needs connective tissue between the two societies: scientists, doctors, students, businesses, scholars, universities, and civil society.

These relationships are not merely the “soft” side of diplomacy. They are part of the hard infrastructure of stability.

Interestingly, people-to-people relations have figured unusually prominently in Beijing’s pre-summit messaging—from Xi’s outreach to students at ten American universities to repeated references to youth, local relationships, the Flying Tigers, and his own long history of engagement with American society. Chinese messaging has emphasized that the relationship’s “hope lies in the people, foundation in society, future in youth, and vitality in localities.”

The fewer legitimate connections that remain between two societies, the greater the danger that each understands the other mainly through security institutions, political rhetoric, and worst-case assumptions.

Not every exchange should be preserved regardless of risk.

But strategic competition without human infrastructure becomes increasingly brittle and dangerous.

Resilience requires both government-to-government mechanisms and society-to-society connections.

That is why bridge builders still matter.

In an era of strategic competition, bridge-building can sometimes sound naïve. But the harder the relationship becomes, the more important serious bridge builders become: people and institutions capable of understanding both societies without romanticizing either, explaining disagreement without amplifying it, and preserving channels through which problems can still be solved.

So my test for the summit is not a grand bargain, but a working stabilization that creates room for constructive strategic stability.

That means:

• Fairness and reciprocity where priorities diverge;

• Mechanisms that translate leader-level direction into mutually agreed, measurable implementation;

• Trade and investment arrangements that create greater predictability and reciprocity;

• An AI firewall and joint defensive mechanisms against shared AI risks;

• Guardrails around the hardest strategic disagreements;

• A positive agenda where cooperation can produce mutual benefit, such as cancer and health collaboration;

• And human infrastructure that keeps the relationship grounded in people—a constant and sober reminder of what all of this is ultimately about.

Article published in collaboration with ChinaFile

On September 24, Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, four months after Trump’s state visit to Beijing in May. That meeting produced a set of economic agreements, a new U.S.-China Board of Trade and Board of Investment, an agreement to open a government-to-government dialogue on artificial intelligence, and a commitment by the two leaders to build what both governments called a “constructive relationship of strategic stability.”

Several consequential elements of the relationship remain unsettled ahead of the September summit. The export-control truce reached in Busan on October 30, 2025—which holds both Washington’s Affiliates Rule and China’s October 9 rare-earth export-control package in abeyance—runs for one year, leaving its future uncertain. Preparations for a bilateral AI risk-and-safety dialogue are reportedly underway, although its timing, participants, and agenda remain unsettled. And, according to some analysis, Washington and Beijing construe “constructive strategic stability” quite differently. The administration has also delayed announcing the proposed $14 billion U.S. arms sale for Taiwan, despite receiving congressional pre-approval in January 2026.

We asked a group of China and U.S.-China relations experts what observers should watch to determine what the meeting actually changes: Which decisions, mechanisms, regulatory actions, political signals—or notable absences—would reveal the direction of the relationship after the leaders leave Washington?

—Jennifer Choo

COMMENTS

The Honorable Dr. Kevin Rudd AC

Much ink has been spilt in recent days forecasting the outcomes of this Thursday’s summit between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. The truth is that these are hard to predict. So perhaps it’s worth reflecting for a moment on the priorities Xi Jinping will have in mind as he wings his way across the Pacific before touching down at Andrews Air Force Base this afternoon.

The number one priority, at least for senior Chinese officials, if not President Xi himself, will be to avoid any personal embarrassment (let alone humiliation) during his brief sojourn in America’s capital. It’s been over a decade since Xi’s last visit to Washington, during the Obama presidency, and that wasn’t exactly easy sailing. On this occasion, there will be premiums on avoiding the slightest protocol glitch, and having all outcomes as orchestrated and as anodyne as possible. For Xi’s domestic audience, being feted appropriately at the White House, without incident, very much represents ‘Mission Accomplished’. It is also critical for the Party’s message to the country and the world at large that China is now being treated as the co-equal of the United States. For Xi, that really matters. In other words, the visit itself is the message, quite separate to whatever of substance might emerge from it.

The second priority will be to secure President Trump’s affirmation of China’s new framing of the relationship as one of ‘Constructive Strategic Stability’ (中美建设性战略稳定关系). Lest anyone underestimate the significance of this objective within the Chinese system, its Embassy in Washington has just published a diagram of what this phrase means.

This nifty little piece of bureaucratic artwork bears striking similarity to the four compass points of the NATO flag. The northern needle represents ‘cooperation’ while, to the left, we see ‘control’ of strategic differences between the two sides (implicitly, but not exclusively, code language for Taiwan). On the eastern point we find competition, but ‘within bounds’; a reference presumably to the non-lethal domains of strategic competition such as their economic contest, tariffs, export controls, artificial intelligence, the race for foreign policy influence around the world, as well as their underlying ideological contest. Then, if these first three compass points can be aligned, we might then proceed to the southern axis which is ‘peace’ or, at least in the words of the illustration, ‘peace within reach’. And just in case the American audience doesn’t grasp the global significance of it all, the Embassy helpfully reminds us that these two giants together represent more than one-third of the global economy and about a quarter of the world’s population, meaning that – beyond their bilateral relationship – ‘stability’ between these giants of the international system matters for the world at large.

The Chinese system loves what it views as the symmetrical or dialectical alignment of underlying truths. On top of that, these compass points remind us of Xi’s enjoinder to the Chinese nation at large that ‘across east, west, north, south and the centre – across government, the military, society and the academy – the Party leads in all’. This was Xi’s take on a time-honoured aphorism first deployed by Mao himself.

Team China’s third priority is more tangible: to keep tariffs as low as possible. This is where real-world economic concerns come to the fore of President Xi’s agenda. The uncomfortable truth for them is that domestically the Chinese economy is performing poorly. Private domestic consumption growth is weak. Private fixed capital investment remains in the recovery ward. Private residential construction is in its sixth year of recession. The only two pistons functioning in the overall Chinese economic engine are state investment and net exports. State-directed investment underpins China’s techno-industrial strategy, drawing both from the budget and from the state banking sector, where Chinese depositors hold the vast proportion of their savings. As a recent OECD report found, Chinese firms received, on average, three to eight times more in government subsidies as firms in the OECD, with that support accounting for almost 60% of their gains in global market share. As for net exports, China’s merchandise trade surplus last year pulled in US$1.2 trillion from the rest of the world. That number grows quarter by quarter. And despite the American tariff wall, China has managed to continue expanding its export markets by piling into Europe and the Global South. This is sending convulsions through what remains of manufacturing in Europe, as well as in South-East Asia – with the exception of Chinese regional investments in third countries designed to circumvent US trade barriers. In aggregate, net exports represent a central contribution to China’s faltering economic growth. For that reason alone, a central Chinese priority for this visit is to sustain the so-called ‘Busan tariff truce’ which the leaders agreed last October at the margins of the APEC Summit in South Korea. This tariff pause comes up for review this November and, on Friday, US Trade Representative Jameson Greer received a brand new suite of tariffing powers by Trump signing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act into law. The worst case outcome for Xi Jinping would be for Donald Trump to reach for the tariff lever once again, especially if the Europeans were then to follow suit.

Xi’s fourth priority relates to critical minerals and rare earths. Through the Chinese lens, the future of this sector is seen as a counterpoint to US export controls on sensitive technology sales to China – principally, advanced semiconductors. Whereas, viewed through America’s lens, China has fallen short of its undertaking at Busan to normalise the trade in critical minerals and rare earths to the US, Japan and other allies. A return to normal export arrangements was part and parcel of the deal struck in Busan whereby America’s punitive tariff regime would be paused for a period of 12 months. This has not occurred. China may therefore engage in overreach, expecting the Americans to liberalise their export controls on semiconductors as a condition precedent to pulling their restrictions off critical minerals and rare earths supply. This could well blow up in Beijing’s face. Critical minerals are a fundamental priority of President Trump, and efforts to prosecute China’s case are more likely to heighten underlying tensions in the US-China relationship than to cause the Americans to back down.

Fifth, both sides have had extensive discussions on the risks of artificial intelligence. These had been broached during their May summit in Beijing. The essential question at stake then was whether the Chinese accept the premise that there is a need for urgent bilateral action to manage the risks associated with frontier models in the hands of rogue states, rogue actors, or for those models to themselves autonomously attack the social and economic infrastructure of both countries. The outstanding question is whether Beijing shares Washington’s urgency on these questions, or whether China believes its own cyber defences are sufficient to withstand any such assault. One further question is whether China accepts that its own open-source and open-weight models, currently being distributed across the world, constitute the same sort of risk as US-generated proprietary models. Minister of State Security Chen Yixin, in a piece titled ‘Comprehensively Strengthen AI Security Safeguards and Promote the Healthy and Orderly Development of AI’, showed signs of embracing the possibility that these real-world risks may in fact exist, and that China just might be as vulnerable as the United States. Despite the fact that Chen went on to attribute all blame to the US for this problem, Beijing may well be starting to appreciate that this is now a problem for the entire world, including China. What guardrails might possibly be agreed between both countries to reduce this risk remains to be seen. One encouraging development is a statement by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday that both sides had agreed to open a bilateral line of consultation and negotiation on this. We still don’t know whether Thursday’s meeting will put more meat on the bone in terms of real-world progress. It is, at least, positive that a bilateral channel appears to have been opened.

The sixth priority is the hoary old chestnut called Taiwan. President Trump made his views on Taiwan known during an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier in May, stating that: ‘when you look at the odds, China is a very, very powerful big country’ whereas Taiwan was a ‘very small island’; that he did not want to ‘travel 9,500 miles to fight a war’ when Taiwan was only ‘59 miles away’ from the Chinese mainland; that Taiwan ‘stole our chip industry’; and that he was pausing a congressionally-approved arms sale to Taiwan valued at some $14 billion. China, of course, would hope to see this arms package continually deferred and ultimately cancelled. After the Washington Summit, each country will host the other for two further face-to-face meetings this year: first during the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November, and then at the G20 summit in Miami in December. It is an open question whether Trump will continue to postpone any final decision on Taiwan’s arms delivery until this sequence of four visits is concluded. By then, he will know whether China has been helpful on critical minerals and rare earths; and, more particularly, whether it has resumed large-scale US agricultural imports ahead of the mid-term elections. These considerations are likely to deeply influence President Trump’s view of China in general and the Taiwan question in particular.

Finally, there are open questions about China’s negotiating position on what positive and productive advances might be possible for the future of the US-China relationship. This is where commentators often point to rebuilding people-to-people exchanges, primarily student exchanges between both countries. Other positive initiatives that have been floated include efforts to ease restrictions on the flow of two-way foreign direct investment to less-sensitive sectors of each other’s economies. A third set of positive initiatives aggregates around future agreements in public health, cancer research, and the joint analysis of clinical trial data that might bring cutting-edge drugs to market much earlier than would otherwise be the case. Of these three, the latter is perhaps the most promising; not only does it go to the heartland of people’s concerns in both countries about the high rate of cancer mortality, but it also opens up new possibilities for deploying AI to analyse clinical trial data (appropriately anonymised and without exchanging genomic material). In other words, a combined initiative between Chinese and US scientists on cancer research and drug development has some practical prospects for success.

Although the precise landing point in each of these seven areas remains unclear, these are the likely parameters within which the Chinese and Americans will be negotiating. It is impossible to predict what outcomes are likely to stabilise the relationship for the long term. The reality is it could go either way. We should remember that, during the first Trump administration, things went swimmingly at first, including the President’s ‘state visit plus’ to Beijing in November 2017. But within two months, the US National Security Strategy announced a new doctrine of ‘strategic competition’ and the White House launched a tariffs jihad against Chinese exports, capped off two full years later with Trump excoriating Beijing over the ‘Kung Flu’ pandemic.

It remains, therefore, in the balance whether this Thursday’s outcomes in Washington genuinely serve to restabilise the relationship for the future. Or whether China, in fact, overplays its hand, resulting in little by way of substantive outcomes for the United States, thereby significantly contributing to a worsening of the relationship once the midterm elections are done and dusted.

The ball, therefore, lies very much in Beijing’s court.

Neil Thomas

Xi Jinping will arrive in Washington for his summit with Donald Trump hoping to prolong the current stability in U.S.-China relations. Since Xi countered last year’s “Liberation Day” tariff hike with disruptive rare-earth export controls, Trump has prioritized good relations with him and put several planned technology restrictions on hold. That has slowed the expansion of the “derisking” agenda of sanctions, export controls, and targeted economic containment that was a pillar of the Biden administration’s China policy. Their Beijing summit in May saw Trump endorse Xi’s framing of bilateral ties as a “constructive relationship of strategic stability.”

Beijing sees the present moment as a golden opportunity to accelerate industrial self-reliance and strengthen its geoeconomic leverage while limiting further U.S. pressure. Of course, the Trump administration has also authorized a record arms package for Taiwan, placed new restrictions on foreign robots, and accused China of “stealing and copying American AI models.” But many Chinese strategists recognize the U.S. president as a relatively benign figure in Washington when it comes to dealing with Beijing. Indeed, word around D.C. is that more hawkish officials have drafted several proposals to hobble China’s high-tech industries, which are ready to go if Trump sours on Xi.

Trump’s centrality to China policymaking makes his personal interactions and negotiations with Xi especially consequential. China’s rare-earth chokehold may encourage restraint, but Trump could swing back to confrontation if he decides Xi is insufficiently respectful or cooperative. That would be Beijing’s worst-case scenario and would likely trigger retaliation, especially given its heightened sensitivity to foreign policy setbacks ahead of a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle at the 21st Party Congress late next year, when Xi is expected to secure a fourth term.

Xi will want his visit planned down to the minute, with equal billing alongside Trump and no risk of embarrassment. According to former Belarusian diplomat Pavel Slunkin, during Xi’s 2015 visit to Belarus, then-protocol chief Qin Gang requested a 2:00 a.m. inspection of a museum Xi would tour later that day. His team wanted to know exactly which step of a staircase Xi would reach when some music began playing. No wonder Chinese officials are rattled at the relative lack of preparation for this summit. Such meticulous planning sits uneasily with Trump’s improvisation: In May, he surprised his hosts by inviting several American executives into a meeting with Xi.

Beijing therefore is eager to make the summit a “success” in Trump’s eyes without making significant concessions on issues like AI-model distillation, industrial overcapacity, or rare-earth export controls. Expect progress on Trump’s Board of Trade and Board of Investment initiatives, promises of additional Chinese purchases of U.S. goods, more dialogues, and an extension of the economic truce—although an agreed duration would be moot if Trump decides to pivot on China. If all goes well, the two leaders may end the summit by confirming that Trump will attend APEC in Shenzhen and Xi the G20 in Miami later this year. If things do not go well, we will know much sooner.

Lizzi C. Lee

China’s economy on the eve of the summit is in less dire shape than many had expected. Exports are holding up despite trade tensions, largely because of China’s centrality and ascent across global value chains. The global AI investment boom has also been an unexpected tailwind, lifting demand for upstream metals and equipment and helping pull the economy out of deflation.

So China comes to Washington with a strong hand. Xi has good reason to lower tensions with the U.S., but he will not make concessions on Beijing’s manufacturing ambitions, precisely because those strengths explain the country’s current resilience.

Yet that resilience may itself be a deeper source of vulnerability. A model supported by domestic tech and manufacturing strength and external tech demand is unusually vulnerable to geopolitical risks, including export controls and swings in the global AI investment boom.

Global market pressure, however, can only go so far toward forcing China to balance its economy. China’s imbalance is ultimately a domestic political-economy problem, which is why I am not optimistic that the September summit will produce a breakthrough. Beijing has correctly diagnosed the problem. Xi Jinping himself calls for strengthening domestic demand. But diagnosis is not action. Genuine rebalancing would require a much larger redistribution of income and fiscal resources toward households and local governments. Those are difficult choices, with clear political winners and losers.

Xi is all-in on making China a technological superpower on par with the U.S. While he seems serious, at least rhetorically, about boosting consumption and expanding social welfare, institutional inertia still favors industrial upgrading and strategic sectors. The supply-side agenda remains an unequivocal top priority, and meaningful improvement in domestic demand will realistically be slow-moving. There is also a basic fiscal constraint: How do you ask local governments to spend more on households when many are neck-deep in debt?

This does not mean the U.S. lacks leverage over China. Access to the American market and innovation ecosystem is in fact enormously valuable to Chinese firms that need deep pools of capital and high-value customers. But turning that leverage into an effective mechanism for negotiating with China on its economic model is far more complicated. The sectors at the crux of the problem, especially advanced manufacturing and new energy, are also central to China’s growth model and deeply entangled with national security. These are precisely the issues on which a hastily prepared summit is unlikely to produce substantial progress.

What happens beyond September is more consequential: whether China’s need to rebalance can be aligned with America’s need to rebuild industrial competitiveness. Chinese cost-effective tech products, produced through intense domestic involution, could eventually be leveraged against supply-chain localization requirements for Chinese firms to access the U.S. market and reshore jobs and technological know-how. But getting that architecture right requires serious preparation, especially below the presidential level. In that sense, the proposed U.S.-China Board of Investment could eventually be useful, especially if it provides Chinese firms with political shielding to invest in the United States beyond individual election cycles.

So I am not optimistic about a grand deal this month. But signs that both sides are willing to build the machinery for a deeper conversation on building healthier, more balanced economic models would matter. Leadership-level intent still has to translate into bureaucratic incentives on both sides. No single summit can do that in one fell swoop.

Craig Allen

Both the U.S. and Chinese governments are signaling that expectations should be lowered for President Xi Jinping’s September 24 state visit to Washington.

CEOs will pay attention to the Board of Trade, the Board of Investment, announced deals and extension of the bilateral export control “truce.”

We should expect announcements concerning the Board of Trade. For example, there has been discussion of the U.S.$30 billion “reciprocal tariff reduction framework.” This would allow a subset of trade to flow with minimal tariffs between the two countries. The Chinese side is expected to grant the U.S. side duty-free preferences for American agricultural product exports. The U.S. side will likely allow Chinese consumer goods to flow duty-free into the U.S. Outside of the $30 billion lower tariff “valley,” all other trade will be assessed a higher duty “plateau.” The exact composition of the low tariff goods “valley” will significantly impact supply chains.

During the summit, we will likely also learn more about the next steps for the Board of Trade, including its structure, schedule, and operating procedures. CEOs will be interested in private sector engagement with the organization and whether it may prove an effective mechanism for addressing market access problems.

Thus far, there have been very few mentions by either government of the Board of Investment, which was formally announced in May, when President Donald Trump visited Beijing. This mechanism is to consider expedited CFIUS approvals for Chinese investors in the United States. At the summit, CEOs will be looking to see if any investments might be announced or “green lit” for future approval.

As a symbol of bilateral efforts to address the trade imbalance, there may be commercial signing ceremonies for American exporters of aircraft, agricultural, or energy exports. These signing ceremonies may be an integral part of the official meetings, or they may be on the margins of the official events.

CEOs in technology industries will be interested to see if there is an extension of the export control “truce” agreed to at APEC last year. Under the terms of the truce, both sides agreed to postpone implementation of new and expansive export control measures for one year. To date, both governments have myriad complaints about the other. The U.S. is concerned about lack of access to rare earth elements. The Chinese are concerned about lack of access to aircraft parts and recently announced FCC regulations. Both sides blame the other for the impasse.

From a legal perspective, the export control dialogue between the two countries should be about national security issues. In fact, the export control dialogue has often become a discussion over commercial chokepoints and industrial policy. Both sides are seeking maximum leverage and trying to minimize their own vulnerabilities. While the two sides may very well extend the truce for another year, the “supply chain war” will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

CEOs will be watching closely.

Paul Triolo

When Presidents Trump and Xi meet on September 24, the primary deliverable will not be soybeans, Boeing planes, or tariff reduction. It will be an extension of the Busan agreement, probably for one year, because both sides recognize the economic and political fallout that would follow without one. The agreement in Busan revolved around holding in abeyance both the U.S. Affiliates Rule, which would massively expand the reach of the U.S. Entity List, and a new set of export controls on critical minerals, rare earths, magnets, and related technologies that would significantly complicate current and future supply chains for these critical inputs. More important, however, is what each side agrees to restrain—and whether the current technology truce can become more durable.

Four years after the United States pioneered a new level of economic coercion in the name of national security with the October 2022 export-control package, the technology relationship has evolved into a reciprocal system of pressure and restraint. Whatever one’s assessment of the controls’ original objectives, they have not prevented Chinese companies from continuing to develop advanced AI, high-performance computing, and semiconductor capabilities, while Beijing has developed increasingly consequential forms of leverage of its own.

Front and center are the critical mineral, rare earth, and magnet controls Beijing has rolled out over the past two years. Measures covering gallium and germanium, graphite, rare-earth processing and magnet-making technology, and antimony culminated in a further series of actions on October 9, 2025, including Announcement 61 which adds extraterritorial and de minimis controls on rare earths. Announcement 61 requires foreign exporters to obtain a Chinese license for specified foreign-made rare-earth products incorporating at least 0.1 percent by value of designated Chinese-origin inputs, as well as covered items made abroad using specified Chinese rare-earth technology, for which no de minimis threshold applies. Those measures remain in abeyance while the Busan agreement holds. The United States, in turn, has held off on the Affiliates Rule, which would sweep thousands of additional Chinese entities under Entity List restrictions.

That makes actual regulatory decisions, rather than summit language, the first thing to watch. Does Washington continue to hold back the Affiliates Rule or other new technology restrictions, such as those recently implemented by the FCC? Does Beijing continue suspending its October 9 measures and facilitate rare-earth and critical-material licensing? And do the two governments clarify what each understands the Busan agreement to require? A nominal extension that leaves both sides repeatedly claiming that the other has violated a vague understanding would do little to break the current tit-for-tat cycle.

A major unanswered question is whether the two governments can begin to build machinery capable of managing that cycle. There is a real deal to be made that would help with this, as I outlined on my Substack, but it seems unlikely, given political pressure in D.C. to be tough on China. Jing Qian and I have proposed a Board of Technology Stability to bring order and sustained high-level attention to issues that can no longer be left to fragmented bureaucracies unable to gauge the impact of their policies on U.S. and allied companies, global supply chains, and the bilateral relationship. Whether or not that particular mechanism is adopted, some empowered process for handling technology-control disputes before they escalate would be significant.

The summit therefore offers a relatively simple test. Extending Busan would preserve the truce. Concrete mutual restraint in licensing and regulatory implementation would make it more credible. A standing mechanism for managing future disputes would suggest something more durable: movement toward what Daleep Singh has called a “shared doctrine of restraint.” Without those steps, the forces pushing both sides toward further controls, de-risking, and retaliation will keep the technology competition—and the broader relationship—on unstable ground, a major negative for global companies and supply chains.

Helen Toner

The last time the United States and China formally met to discuss AI risk and safety was in Geneva in May 2024, when many of the technology’s security implications were largely hypothetical. By 2026, the hypothetical has become real—but it remains to be seen whether that is enough to produce more productive dialogue between the United States and China.

The Geneva talks in 2024 were mostly notable for having happened at all, during a period of high bilateral tensions. Later that year, then President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping did manage to agree on the importance of human control over nuclear weapons, but otherwise the sense on both sides was that there was little momentum behind any discussions around AI safety and risk management.

This year, things may be different. In March, reporting on U.S. strikes in Iran documented the central role being played by AI in the military’s targeting process. In April, the U.S. company Anthropic announced a new model called Mythos that can carry out sophisticated offensive cyber operations. And in July, a swarm of hundreds of autonomous agents escaped OpenAI’s research infrastructure to attack the AI platform Hugging Face, roaming freely on the open internet for days before being noticed and contained.

No surprise, then, that AI risk management is near the top of the agenda for Trump and Xi. But it remains to be seen whether a new round of U.S.-China discussions on AI safety and security will bear fruit.

One challenge is the sheer breadth of AI-related topics. On the one hand, the fact that AI touches on every industry and domain of society raises the salience of the technology overall, but on the other, it makes it challenging to home in on specific topics of focus. What’s more, there is AI-specific distrust on both sides. The U.S. side is unconvinced that China takes the risks of AI catastrophe seriously, while the Chinese side doubts U.S. sincerity given what it sees as an inadequate regulatory regime in Washington and a history of attempting to slow China’s technological progress.

To determine whether the Trump-Xi summit is fruitful, we can look for two key pieces of groundwork for future talks. Do Trump and Xi select consistent interlocutors to continue discussions at the working level, and can they identify concrete challenges related to AI that both sides want to tackle?

First, selecting the right interlocutors on both sides has been an ongoing difficulty, given the alphabet soup of agencies in each country whose responsibilities touch on AI. If we emerge from this round of engagement with clear counterparts empowered to continue AI discussions at the working level, there will be much better chances of ongoing progress.

Second, a crucial ingredient will be narrowing the discussion from “AI security”—or, in Chinese, anquan (安全), which encompasses both safety and security—to the specific challenges both sides wish to address. There are many options for topics: bad actors’ use of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, risks from openly released AI models, or the industry’s headlong rush towards fully autonomous self-improving AI, among others. Vague statements about addressing risks and promoting benefits, however, would be a sign that meaningful progress is still elusive.

Given the speed at which AI is advancing, the two countries may not have many more chances to get off on the right foot.

Lyle J. Morris

Washington’s long-standing policy toward Taiwan will inevitably test Beijing’s “red line” on Taiwan. This is because U.S. policy, including arms sales and congressional visits to Taiwan, is rooted in the Taiwan Relations Act and reflects enduring, bi-partisan practices that will continue regardless of who occupies the White House.

That policy will by default upset Beijing, which seeks curbs on U.S. arms sales and official engagement with Taipei. Despite having described Taiwan as “the core of China’s core interests” and the “first red line that must not be crossed” in U.S.-China relations, Xi Jinping is not likely to have seen Chinese concerns over U.S. Taiwan policy assuaged when he visits the White House.

The proposed $14 billion U.S. arms package for Taiwan, which Congress pre-approved in January 2026 but which the Trump administration has yet to formally notify to Congress, represents an unusually concrete test of the “constructive strategic stability” framework agreed to by both leaders in May. As of early September, the Trump administration has not formally notified Congress that he has approved the sale. Consequently, neither the package’s final value nor its precise composition has been confirmed by the State Department.

The package reportedly includes counter-drone capabilities, an integrated battle-command system, and medium-range munitions. A bipartisan group of senators urged Trump to formally notify Congress of the package before his May meeting with Xi. Trump did not do so and subsequently acknowledged discussing Taiwan arms sales with Xi “in great detail,” while saying that no commitment had been made and that a decision would follow.

The timing of any notification would nevertheless carry considerable weight. Notification before Xi’s visit to the White House on September 24, which is unlikely, would demonstrate that U.S. security policy toward Taiwan remains insulated from summit diplomacy. Holding the package through the summit could indicate an effort to avoid introducing a major irritant while the two leaders seek broader stability.

Trump should notify Congress shortly after the visit. Doing so would preserve the diplomatic atmosphere while ultimately upholding longstanding U.S. commitments to Taiwan. If Trump were instead to wait longer, that would generate greater uncertainty about Washington’s commitment to Taipei and give rise to suggestions that Trump is currying favor with Xi at the expense of relations with Taiwan.

Make no mistake, Taipei desperately needs the weapons. People’s Liberation Army aircraft and naval vessels continue their relentless coercion around Taiwan. Beijing has expanded its gray zone activities as well, recently deploying Naval and Coast Guard vessels east of the island, characterizing the activity as a “lawful exercise in jurisdiction.” As a result, Taipei’s deterrence posture for both highly kinetic contingencies and lower thresholds is deteriorating. These intrusions are unfolding alongside persistent tensions in the South China Sea and expanding regional security cooperation driven partly by concerns over Chinese military pressure.

The larger question for the summit, therefore, is not whether Washington avoids crossing Beijing’s Taiwan red line. The two governments fundamentally disagree over where that line lies. It is whether they can establish clearer guardrails around that disagreement. “Constructive strategic stability” will acquire meaning only if Washington and Beijing can continue pursuing incompatible Taiwan policies while developing mechanisms that prevent those differences from producing unintended crises.

Jing Qian

When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet in Washington on September 24, attention will focus on trade, technology, and Taiwan. But there is a quieter test worth watching: whether the two governments can name a single area where cooperation delivers something Americans can actually see.

In May, the two leaders agreed to “build a constructive relationship of strategic stability.” The White House added an important qualifier: “on the basis of fairness and reciprocity.” The field of medicine is one area where that principle could be demonstrated.

This is not an argument for setting competition aside. The United States and China will keep competing hard in artificial intelligence and biotechnology, and raising legitimate concerns about intellectual property, data security, supply chains, and dual-use technology. Moreover, decades of scientific engagement helped China build research, clinical, and commercial capabilities that now rival—though in some areas complement—American strengths. That’s an argument for approaching cooperation carefully, not for pretending China lacks capacity or for forgoing opportunities to use it selectively where it can strengthen American competitiveness and improve health outcomes for American patients.

Cancer makes the case. The American Cancer Society projects that 626,140 Americans will die of the disease this year—about 1,720 every day. A Chinese discovery that helps cure an American patient is not an American defeat, and an American medicine that saves a Chinese life is not a Chinese defeat. The measure of success should be whether people live longer and healthier lives.

The two countries bring different strengths. The United States leads in basic biomedical science, regulatory standards, capital markets, and commercialization. China has developed extraordinary clinical scale, faster patient recruitment, and a growing role in global drug development. The task is to use those complementary strengths selectively, without compromising either country’s legitimate security interests.

There are practical places to begin. The two sides could work together to speed drug discovery with responsible AI and make clinical evidence more interoperable in cancer and rare diseases, while keeping patient-level and genomic data protected. They could run parallel regulatory work on selected cancer therapies, each regulator retaining its own authority. They could cooperate on early detection, where larger patient populations can help reveal more quickly what works.

And as AI grows more powerful in biology, both countries have an interest in keeping terrorists and criminals from exploiting it to develop bioweapons. That last point matters beyond health. Cooperation today cannot rest on strategic trust that does not exist. It can rest on shared vulnerability to build predictability: narrow commitments, clear rules, notification mechanisms, and evidence that each side does what it said it would. Predictability is not trust. Over time, it can help carry both sides beyond unreasonable suspicion.

The political space exists. In May, Xi named health among the areas where the two countries should expand cooperation. And the calendar is short: China hosts APEC in November, followed by the U.S.-hosted G20 in December, with both governments already committed to supporting the other as host. That gives September a simple task: Turn language into something people can see, with two opportunities soon afterward to demonstrate progress.

Cancer cooperation will not resolve the rivalry. Precisely because the rivalry is durable, both countries need places where working together remains possible.

Health should be one of them.

This special issue of PLA Watch examines a consequential shift in the composition and geography of Chinese military and gray-zone pressure around Taiwan in 2026. We document what appears to be a sharp decline in PLA air activity, with aircraft sorties falling by roughly half year on year. This is juxtaposed with a major uptick in Chinese “official-vessel” activity, such as coast guard and maritime research vessels. When digging into the aggregate maritime data, we find that the rise is driven principally by China Coast Guard activity, in particular operations east of Taiwan’s main island since June 2026. This extends a gray-zone pattern previously concentrated around Kinmen and Matsu, Pratas, and Itu Aba. Finally, we examine Beijing’s effort to routinize these operations through the language and practice of “normalized law-enforcement patrols,” suggesting that China is not simply shifting pressure from the air to the sea, but broadening the geographic scope and legal-administrative character of its coercion around Taiwan. Taken together, these developments point to a changing coercive strategy in which persistent maritime law-enforcement activity is becoming an increasingly important instrument for asserting Chinese jurisdiction and shaping the operational environment around Taiwan below the threshold of overt military conflict.

Summary and Key Judgements

Overall Summary

PLA aircraft sorties around Taiwan in 2026 appear to be operating at roughly half last year’s rate, while naval activity remains generally the same. However, “official-vessel” activity compiled by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has risen sharply. The increase is driven principally by China Coast Guard (CCG) activity, and since June 2026, its geographic center of gravity has expanded to waters east of Taiwan’s main island. The result is not a one-for-one transfer of pressure from air to sea, but a consequential change in the composition, geography, and legal-administrative character of Beijing’s coercion.

Data Scope and Sources:

Summary of Key Judgments

1. Air activity has halved, at both ends of the distribution. Sorties fell 51.1% year on year, from 3,603 to 1,763 over the same 231-day window. Days with no aircraft rose from 12 to 43, while days above 50 sorties fell from eight to zero. The routine baseline and the surge activity visible from Taiwan Ministry of National Defense (MND) reporting both contracted.

2. The character of air activity did not change. The share of sorties crossing the median line or entering Taiwan’s ADIZ was 71.3% in both years. The change is in frequency, not a shift toward “fewer but more aggressive” sorties.

3. Law-enforcement vessel presence more than doubled and became routine. MND official-ship detections rose from 183 to 457 (+149.7%). Days with five or more official ships rose from one to 33. From June onward, the average was about 3.9 official ships per day, compared with 0.9 in January–May.

4. The MND category masks the agency driving the increase. MND groups non-naval PRC government vessels into a single “official vessel” category. Taiwan Coast Guard Administration (CGA) records disaggregate that category into CCG, Maritime Safety Administration (MSA), and fisheries-enforcement vessels; the CCG makes up by far the largest share. This separate evidence supports attributing the maritime law-enforcement increase principally to the CCG.

5. The geographic center of gravity of PRC law-enforcement gray-zone activity has shifted eastward. Since June 2026, CCG formations have operated east of Taiwan’s main island, extending a pattern previously concentrated around Kinmen/Matsu, Pratas (Dongsha), and Itu Aba (Taiping Island). The sequence suggests geographic expansion of an established gray-zone model rather than an isolated episode.

6. Beijing is attempting to normalize an enforcement presence east of Taiwan. On July 4, a CCG formation led by the cutter Xiushan relieved the Daishan formation and Beijing used the phrase “normalized law-enforcement patrols.” This routinization language resembles terminology used in other contested maritime spaces where China seeks to assert jurisdiction through persistent law-enforcement presence.

7. This is a shift in composition and geography, not a transfer of pressure at constant volume. The official-ship increase of 274 detections offsets only 14.9% of the 1,840-sortie air decline. Total observed activity across aircraft, PLAN vessels, and official ships fell 30% year on year. The stronger conclusion is that the mix and operating pattern have changed.

Analysis

Air activity: Volume Halved, Character Unchanged

The year-on-year decline in PLA air activity is large and consistent across the principal measures in Taiwan’s daily reporting. Sorties fell from 3,603 to 1,763 between 1 January and 19 August, a decline of 51.1%. Median-line crossings and ADIZ entries fell by essentially the same proportion, from 2,570 to 1,257. The decline was already emerging in the fourth quarter of 2025: October was the weakest month of that year, and excluding the two-day surge on 29–30 December, the remainder of December averaged 9.6 sorties per day, close to the 2026 baseline.

The most analytically important continuity is the proportion of air activity entering contested space. As Figure 1 indicates, the median-line/ADIZ share was 71.3% in both years. This stability argues against interpreting 2026 as a deliberate trade of sortie volume for greater per-sortie aggressiveness. Beijing is flying less often, but the observed geographic character of those flights is broadly unchanged.

Figure 1: PLA aircraft sorties detected around Taiwan, by month, 2025 vs 2026

Notes: A sortie is one flight, not one aircraft. 2026 data run to 19 August. Over the same 231-day window (1 January – 19 August), sorties fell from 3,603 to 1,763 (−51.1%); the share crossing the median line or entering the ADIZ was 71.3% in both years. The December 2025 figure is carried by two days: 29 and 30 December account for 207 of that month’s 486 sorties, and the remaining 29 days average 9.6 sorties — already at the 2026 level.

Composition Shifts in Maritime Activity

Against the halving of air activity, the maritime picture is more stable in absolute terms but substantially more important in relative terms. As Table 1 illustrates, PLAN vessel detections fell only 4.9%, from 1,706 to 1,622. Official-ship detections, by contrast, rose from 183 to 457. As a share of all reported detections, aircraft fell from 65.6% to 45.9%, while PLAN and official vessels together rose from 34.4% to 54.1%. For the first time in this comparison, most of what Taiwan’s military reports observing around the island is on the water rather than in the air. Figure 2 below compares official ship detection rates from 2025 and 2026.

Table 1: PLA Aircraft Sorties, PLAN vessels, “official” vessels, and overall detections, 2025 vs 2026.

The change in official-vessel activity is not simply a higher count. It is a change in operating pattern. In the 2025 window, only one day recorded five or more official ships; in 2026, 33 days did. The rise began around 28 May and ramped up over roughly ten days. Monthly totals then remained elevated through June, July, and August, turning what had been an episodic presence into something closer to a standing one.

Figure 2: PRC official ship detections, daily average by month, 2025 vs 2026

Notes: “Official ships” is the Ministry’s category for PRC government vessels operated for non-commercial purposes; the daily reports do not identify the operating agency. Daily averages divide monthly detections by days in the month. Over the same 231-day window, detections rose from 183 to 457 (+150%), and the number of days with five or more official ships rose from 1 to 33. The shift began around 28 May 2026, when daily counts moved from 0–1 to 3–4 and then to 5–10 through the first week of June. 2026 data run to 19 August; January–April 2026 values are provisional pending confirmation against the primary compilation.

CCG Pressure Moves East

The additional CGA evidence changes the interpretation of the maritime increase in an important way. Prior PRC law-enforcement gray-zone pressure had been concentrated around Taiwan’s offshore holdings and other contested spaces—most notably Kinmen and Matsu, then Pratas (Dongsha) and Itu Aba (Taiping Island). Since June 2026, that pattern has expanded to the eastern side of Taiwan’s main island. CommonWealth Magazine tracking cited in the CCG analysis found no comparable earlier activity east of Taiwan in the prior MND statistics; the June onset therefore marks a geographic expansion of the existing gray-zone model.

This eastward shift matters because waters east of Taiwan have traditionally been strategically significant as an avenue for resupply, reinforcement, and access to the wider Pacific. A persistent PRC law-enforcement presence there broadens the geography in which Beijing can practice surveillance, jurisdictional assertion, merchant-vessel hailing, and other coercive activities below the threshold of overt military force. It also reduces the analytical usefulness of treating gray-zone pressure around Taiwan primarily as a phenomenon of the Taiwan Strait or the offshore islands.

Legal-administrative Coercion and the Logic of Routinization

Taiwan’s cross-strait maritime regime distinguishes “prohibited waters” (禁止水域) and “restricted waters” (限制水域), corresponding broadly to territorial-sea and contiguous-zone functions but with specially delimited polygons around offshore islands close to the mainland. This framework is operationally important because Chinese law-enforcement incursions can be tracked not only as vessel presence but as challenges to Taiwan’s exercise of jurisdiction in specific maritime zones.

The June–July 2026 sequence suggests Beijing is attempting to establish a new routine rather than conduct a single signaling operation. After a Japan–Philippines summit on 28 May announced EEZ and continental-shelf delimitation talks, China protested and on 1 June dispatched a CCG formation led by Daishan for “law-enforcement” patrols east of Taiwan. From 6–9 June, four large official vessels conducted a special maritime-traffic enforcement operation, entered restricted waters southwest of Cape Eluanbi, and hailed foreign merchant vessels. On 4 July, a formation led by Xiushan relieved Daishan, and the CCG described the activity as “normalized law-enforcement patrols.”

The Japan–Philippines delimitation talks are therefore best understood as the proximate trigger and public legal pretext, not necessarily the underlying strategic driver. The broader pattern—from Kinmen in 2024, to Pratas and Itu Aba in 2025–26, and now east of Taiwan—suggests a sustained effort to widen the geographic scope of PRC law-enforcement jurisdictional claims and make repeated presence appear ordinary.

Analytic Implications

The center of gravity has shifted, but aggregate pressure has declined. The data support an initial conclusion that the observed mix of coercion has tilted from the air to maritime domains.

The CCG is increasingly central to day-to-day coercion. Separate Taiwan Coast Guard Administration (CGA) evidence resolves an important limitation in MND reporting and indicates that coast guard activity is the principal source of the official-vessel increase.

The eastward expansion is strategically more significant than the raw vessel count. Persistent CCG operations east of Taiwan extend jurisdictional gray-zone tactics into a maritime space with direct relevance to Taiwan’s links to the Pacific and to key sea lines of communication (SLOCs).

Routinization may be the objective. The use of “normalized law-enforcement patrols,” rapid replenishment of one CCG formations by another, and sustained elevated counts suggest an effort to convert episodic incursions into a new accepted baseline.

The pattern should be monitored as a sequence, not as isolated incidents. Kinmen, Pratas/Itu Aba, and now waters east of Taiwan exhibit a common logic: repeated law-enforcement presence, legal or administrative justification, and normalization of PRC jurisdictional behavior below the threshold of war.

Timelines, Notes and Sources

Timeline: May–July 2026

What MND’s “Official Vessel” Category Conceals

MND’s daily reporting does not identify the operating agency behind “official ships.” The category follows Taiwan’s legal distinction between foreign military vessels and other foreign official vessels and can include CCG ships, Maritime Safety Administration vessels, and fisheries law-enforcement ships. MND data alone therefore cannot support a specific claim that every additional official-vessel detection is a Coast Guard vessel.

Taiwan CGA records provide the missing disaggregation. The CGA data separate CCG, MSA, and fisheries-enforcement vessels and show that CCG vessels account for by far the largest share of the activity. Read together, the MND and CGA datasets sharpen the original finding: the rise in official-vessel detections is not merely a generic increase in Chinese government shipping but is principally an expansion of coast-guard-centered gray-zone activity.

What the Evidence Does Not Show

The datasets remain observational. MND detections measure what Taiwan’s military observed and reported; they do not directly measure PRC capability or intent. The 51.1% fall in detected air sorties is consistent with reduced activity but does not rule out changes in activity outside the reporting series. Likewise, the CGA disaggregation supports identifying the CCG as the principal contributor to the official-vessel increase, but the strategic purpose attributed to that activity remains an analytic judgment rather than a direct measurement.

Sources and Methodological Note

Taiwan Ministry of National Defense daily reports on PLA activity in the waters and airspace around Taiwan, 1 January 2025–19 August 2026; authors’ compilation with complete daily coverage. Taiwan Coast Guard Administration public records, used to disaggregate MND’s “official vessel” category. CommonWealth Magazine reporting and vessel-track analysis on PRC gray-zone activity around Kinmen and Taiwan, including its 4 August 2026 investigation of CCG operations around Taiwan. The quantitative comparisons preserve the original 231-day year-on-year window.

The devastating floods along the China-Nepal border in late August highlight the growing political importance Beijing places on disaster response. After a glacier collapse triggered catastrophic flooding and landslides across Nepal and Tibet, President Xi Jinping ordered an “all-out rescue effort.” This is significant as during his nearly 14 years in power, Xi has rarely appeared at the frontline of a disaster, in stark contrast to his predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

On August 28, Xi chaired a Politburo meeting focused on disaster response, while Premier Li Qiang travelled to Gyirong County in Tibet to oversee relief efforts. Both called for stronger monitoring and early-warning systems, as well as measures to prevent secondary disasters. The response was framed around “better coordinating development and security,” reflecting the broader elevation of disaster prevention and resilience not only by China’s leadership but also alongside priorities linked to security and economic development.

This growing political attention comes as extreme weather becomes more frequent and costly. In mid-August, Typhoon Dolphin brought record rainfall, flooding and landslides across eastern, central and northern China, forcing more than one million people to evacuate. Climate-related losses totaled CNY 42.14 billion (US$6.1 billion) in the first half of 2026 alone and are set to increase, given that most extreme-weather events occur during the summer months. More broadly, China’s leadership is increasingly linking the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather to climate change.

Disaster response is therefore becoming more than an emergency-management issue for Beijing. As the economic and social consequences of extreme weather become harder to ignore, the leadership is increasingly linking disaster preparedness, adaptation, and resilience to climate change—and treating them as essential to protecting economic development, national security and social stability.

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Political Elites Elevate Disaster Response

Xi’s comments on the China-Nepal border are the latest instance of increased attention on disasters from top leadership. At an April 2026 group study session of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, Xi stressed that disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief should be viewed from the strategic perspective of both high-quality development and high-level security. Notably, he also made a direct link to climate change by emphasizing that extreme weather events have become significantly more frequent and destructive.

These links to climate change have continued in subsequent meetings and publications. In July 2026, Xi chaired a committee meeting that urged all regions and relevant departments to take solid measures to ensure effective flood control, drought relief, emergency responses, and disaster mitigation. It was noted that China would continue to face more extreme weather and climate events, with both droughts and floods posing significant challenges.

Most recently, “disaster prevention, mitigation, and relief capabilities” was the headline theme of the August edition of Qiushi, the official theoretical bimonthly journal of the CCP. Its inclusion and, more so, its headlining indicate that climate is a priority for leadership. The edition led with the full text of Xi’s April speech and included several articles on the theme of extreme weather response and resilience. One of the pieces, authored by the Party Committee of the Ministry of Emergency Management, reflects Xi’s thoughts on prioritizing disaster prevention, never “lowering the guard regarding risk prevention and control” and acknowledging that China faces the “long-term, complex, and severe nature of natural disaster risks.”

When viewed together, these interventions suggest that disaster response is being elevated from a technical responsibility of emergency-management agencies into a strategic concern of the Party-state. Climate change is increasingly part of this framing because it compounds the physical risks that Beijing already sees as threats to economic development and national security. This also places greater emphasis on climate adaptation, which means taking action to prepare for and adjust to current and expected climate impacts, including more frequent and severe extreme weather events.

From Beijing’s Priorities to Local Action

The importance of responding to climate impacts and continuing to develop better disaster response is not only seen in Xi’s rhetoric but also in national-level policies. China’s “15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) for National Response to Climate Change”, released in July, calls for stronger climate-risk assessments and responses to extreme weather, alongside measures to build more resilient cities, food systems and health infrastructure.

Following suit, the Ministry of Natural Resources in August similarly shifted its approach to geological disasters, from a focus on individual hazard sites toward the management broader risk zones. Its “National Geological Disaster Prevention and Control ‘15th Five-Year Plan’ Implementation Plan” includes relocating around 50,000 households from high-risk areas, more than 4,200 engineering projects, expanded monitoring and early-warning systems, and greater use of big data and AI to improve disaster management coordination between national and provincial authorities.

China’s provinces and cities retain significant responsibility for translating national priorities into local action, reflecting the “一城一策” or “one city, one policy” approach, which recognizes differences in local topography and climate risks. In 2024, China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) deepened pilot projects aimed at building climate resilience in 39 cities while also creating unique provincial level action plans for adaptation that include sponge-city measures and risk-assessments. However, continued funding and capacity support is needed to ensure local governments do not have to choose between longer-term adaptation projects and immediate development and economic growth needs.

At the local level, citizens are increasingly engaging with climate impacts. On Douyin and Xiaohongshu, two of China’s most popular social media platforms, users share firsthand accounts of their experiences with extreme weather. During a July 2025 heatwave in Chengdu, Xiaohongshu users posted photos and videos showing parts of the city’s metro being used as a refuge from extreme heat and humidity. Research shows that during typhoons, climate impacts posting on Chinese social media rose from 41.74% to 48.97%. While this does not mean that every individual disaster is explicitly attributed to climate change, it suggests that extreme weather events can heighten public awareness of their connection to climate change.

This growing visibility of climate impacts is also reflected in public opinion: a 2024 UNDP survey found that 68% of people in China said climate change was affecting major decisions in their lives, while 39% said they were more worried about climate change than the previous year in the context of changing extreme weather. 71% also supported greater protection for people vulnerable to extreme weather.

What Does This Mean for China’s Domestic Governance and Global Diplomacy?

Domestically, disaster response, adaptation, and resilience are increasingly being framed as matters of national security and economic resilience, aligning with Xi’s broader emphasis on high-quality development, technological innovation, and social stability. The political question is therefore shifting from whether Beijing recognizes these risks to whether the Party-state can translate this increasingly clear top-level priority into adequately funded and coordinated action at the local level, where frontline implementation will take place.

For energy policy, this will also have implications as climate resilience becomes increasingly intertwined with the need to protect power infrastructure, manage rising electricity demand during extreme heat, and ensure reliable energy supplies amid droughts, floods, and other disruptions. As China’s economy becomes more electrified, the resilience of its power system will become an increasingly important component of energy security.

Diplomatically, disaster resilience offers China an opportunity to position itself as a provider of practical climate solutions while advancing Xi’s broader goals around global governance. At COP29, China launched the Action Plan on Early Warning for Climate Change Adaptation (2025–2027), while Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang announced a South-South cooperation initiative providing developing countries with meteorological observation equipment, early-warning systems, and technical training.

China’s pioneering of early-warning systems, like MAZU (Multi-hazard, Alert, Zero-gap and Universal), and its applications of AI, drones, and autonomous technologies for weather forecasting and disaster response allow Beijing to align several interests, including strengthening South-South cooperation, expanding the role of Chinese technology, and building diplomatic influence in an area where demand is growing rapidly. These technologies also give Beijing a practical way to demonstrate the benefits of Chinese innovation.

Beijing clearly understands the need to adapt and the implications on national security and economic development implications. The next challenge is turning this political recognition into sustained investment and local capacity—and, in parallel, determining how the technologies developed to manage these risks at home can support China’s wider ambitions abroad.

I visited Beijing for several weeks in June and July for a series of intensive dialogues with Chinese policymakers, advisors, corporate leaders, think tank experts, journalists, and foreign diplomats. My meetings covered a broad agenda, including China’s energy and climate strategies and industrial policy, its trade and economic relations with other nations, and its evolving view of China’s international responsibilities. Drawing on these exchanges, I offer five observations.

1. China’s economic strengths and weaknesses are strikingly visible in one sector: electric vehicles (EVs). My schedule of six to seven meetings a day in Beijing meant numerous Didi rides. For a clean tech analyst, those trips also gave me ample opportunity to observe China’s EV ecosystem up close. The variety of EV brands, positive user experience, and attractive technologies on offer in China are all well documented. Many of Beijing’s shopping malls have been repurposed as EV showrooms, showcasing China’s industrial prowess. But the sheer prominence of the sector also reflects the economy’s deep imbalances.

Following the bursting of the real estate bubble, China has struggled to identify new growth engines and appears increasingly reliant on a narrow set of sectors, including EVs, to sustain growth. But even that momentum has slowed. Passenger EV sales decelerated in June on a year-over-year basis. The service economy also remains depressed, and economic pessimism has become widespread. A contact at a leading carbon consultancy reported that most of their government contracts have dried up due to local budget constraints and that the firm has shrunk to one-third of the size it was five years ago. The NGO sector, meanwhile, is entering a period of contraction. Many organizations have frozen hiring after two decades of rapid expansion, though this retrenchment appears to be driven less by the broader economic slowdown than by funding uncertainties stemming from geopolitical tensions.

2. China’s industrial ecosystem is not only more cost-competitive but increasingly greener than production in other countries. In three separate conversations, my interlocutors pointed to new developments in China’s industrial ecosystem that are reinforcing China’s advantage: new aluminum production is relocating from coastal provinces to western China in order to leverage large-scale renewables; European chemical companies that initially moved to China for cost reasons are now finding their local production less carbon-intensive; and green iron ore production, or the processing of iron ore with minimal carbon emissions, is becoming more cost-competitive in China than in Australia, thanks to renewable energy integration. These examples all tell a larger story of how abundant, cheap green energy is beginning to fundamentally reshape China’s industrial landscape. The West’s advantage in lower-carbon production is steadily eroding while Chinese analysts expect China’s competitive lead to widen further. A presentation from a leading research agency explored a critical strategic question: What are the chances that other countries will surpass China in clean tech competitiveness, whether through incremental sector development or disruptive technological breakthroughs? The agency’s conclusion—based on detailed technology-specific analysis, supply chain mapping, and market share breakdowns—was that overtaking China in the most consequential and widely deployed low-carbon technologies is unlikely. This view is shared by a battery expert, who emphasized the accumulated engineering know-how Chinese companies have built up through years of manufacturing—expertise that is difficult to transfer and almost impossible to replicate in places lacking production capacities.

3. Economic and trade tensions, most notably between Brussels and Beijing, are likely to persist and will require fresh perspectives to manage effectively. China’s international relations experts are not optimistic about the EU-China relationship, acknowledging the direct economic competition between two parties. Some have even posed a provocative question: Will China lose the EU in the same way it lost the United States? Others have countered with the reverse: Will the EU lose China? While the relationship appears to have avoided an immediate escalation following the European Council’s mid-June meeting on China, recent interactions, including PRC Commerce Minister Wang Wentao’s visit, seem to have generated little goodwill. Both sides will almost certainly dig in ahead of the next European Council meeting in October, and Brussels will pay close attention to the September Trump-Xi meeting in the United States.

The bottom line is this: the direct conflict of economic interests between China and the EU is real and will remain a feature of the relationship. If both sides insist on rhetorical confrontation, it will generate endless friction. The danger is that these tensions may ultimately lead both sides to pursue policies that work against their own interests. Clear examples already exist. In clean tech, for instance, there is a persistent tendency to overstate the economic benefits of domestic production while underappreciating other parts of the value chain. In the solar sector, for example, installation generates more jobs than manufacturing. In the auto sector, vehicle sales and leasing, as well as an increasingly broad range of business models built around EVs, also generate substantial jobs and economic value. The broader industrialization debate could also benefit from articulating the “win.” Rather than rhetorically championing diversification or domestic production, policymakers from both sides need to specify exactly how much should be reshored, to where, at what cost, at whose expense, and on what timeline. Instead of focusing primarily on industrialization “inputs”—subsidies in the U.S. context and regulations in Europe—the expected “outputs” and “outcomes” also need to be clearly articulated. For example, how many leading companies should be in Europe, or what percentage of completely “China-free” domestic production in a given sector should be expected by 2030, and what level of subsidies or policy intervention would be required to get there?

4. The Strait of Hormuz closure has both reinforced China’s energy security strategy and prompted it to evolve. According to China’s oil experts, a combination of measures has helped to drive a sharp decline in oil imports in recent months: reducing spot and long-term purchases in response to high oil prices, suspending commercial and strategic reserve purchases, releasing reserves onto the market, imposing export controls on refined products, clearing warehouse inventories, and rapidly adopting EVs. In addition, the coal chemical sector played just a minor supporting role in reducing dependence on foreign energy supplies. The prevailing sentiment in Beijing is that this comprehensive set of measures, many of them planned and executed over years, has served China well during the current global market volatility. My Didi drivers concurred, telling me that the fuel cost of an EV is at most one-fifth that of a gasoline vehicle in Beijing and sometimes even lower. Some said they would not be in the ride-hailing business at all with a conventional vehicle. Indeed, unless one drives a gasoline car or flies frequently (a fuel surcharge was imposed earlier in the war), the Iran energy shock seems rather remote in the daily life of a Chinese citizen.

The Middle East crisis has also subtly but importantly shaped China’s thinking on energy security. An oil sector executive highlighted a shift in priorities from ensuring supply security to ensuring supply stability—the former emphasizing sufficient volumes and the latter minimizing price volatility once those volumes are secured. Another important lesson is that energy security can come from not only securing supplies but also from maintaining flexibility in demand. Compared with the significant political push from the coal industry in 2022 following the Russia-Ukraine conflict, another expert observed that the Iran crisis did not seem to trigger a similar push from the coal sector. That said, Chinese officials largely maintain their existing position on new coal power plant construction, viewing coal power as an additional source of grid flexibility and pointing to continued growth in electricity demand as industries increasingly electrify. There is little indication that they intend to curb new construction. The coal chemical sector also emerges as a clear beneficiary, now bolstered by strategic considerations that diminish the force of environmental and economic counterarguments.

5. China’s sense of international responsibility is evolving, offering new structural opportunities for environmental advocacy. Chinese experts noted that recent policy documents have taken an important step, vowing to “firmly” take the lead (从“引领”到“坚定引领”) in multilateral governance—a phrase first used in 2017 during the first Trump administration and a sign of the leadership’s resolve to take a more proactive role. China’s strategic community appears to be moving ahead of its climate community in thinking about the country’s global role. In their view, China’s expanding global interests increasingly require a more proactive international posture. This position will gradually shape downstream policy domains, including climate change, making climate responsibility an extension of China’s broader global strategy. Even conversations within the climate policy circles offer revealing insights into China’s perception of its future global role. The Chinese climate envoy and policy advisors all expressed hope that Washington would return to the UN Framework Convention and the Paris Agreement. This desire should not be dismissed as merely rhetorical. One could even ask: In an increasingly competitive relationship, why would China want the United States back in the multilateral climate system, only to face more pressure from Washington? The answer lies in a deeper shift in how China views its international climate position, particularly its cost-benefit calculus. As the world’s dominant producer of clean energy technologies, Beijing increasingly sees ambitious global climate action as advancing its own economic interests. Sustained American absence, in China’s view, weakens the global demand needed to support that commercial opportunity.

Given that AI governance could emerge as a topic ahead of the anticipated September 24 Trump-Xi summit, we bring together on-the-ground observations from three CCA contributors who traveled to Shanghai for the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC): Alvin Wang Graylin, Paul Triolo, and Ran Guo. Their contributions examine how China’s AI ecosystem is evolving across compute, governance, safety, commercialization, and data. Kristy Loke, a research fellow with the Machine Learning Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS) program who studies China’s AI governance, adds a broader strategic lens by examining Xi Jinping’s articulation of an open AI strategy and its implications for U.S.-China technology competition. Taken together, these observations offer a corrective to a chip-centric view of U.S.-China AI competition. Compute constraints are real, but the conference revealed an ecosystem adapting around them. The governing question for U.S.-China technology policy is therefore how export controls interact with China’s increasingly durable adaptations.

For a broader take on the themes across this issue, read Lizzi C. Lee’s Substack post: When the Constraint Becomes the Strategy.

In this issue:

1. Alvin Wang Graylin — Compute constraints, World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), policy signals, and data

2. Paul Triolo — Hardware integration and China’s safety-evaluation ecosystem

3. Kristy Loke — Openness as China’s strategic narrative

4. Ran Guo — Data governance and the economics of health AI

Terms readers need

FLOPs and compute scarcity: FLOPs, or floating-point operations, are a measure of computing work. In this issue, compute scarcity refers to limited access to leading accelerators for training, inference, and safety evaluation.

Blackwell and the Atlas 950 SuperPoD: Blackwell is Nvidia’s advanced accelerator architecture. Huawei’s Atlas 950 SuperPoD is a system-level cluster designed to link as many as 8,192 Ascend 950 NPUs into a single large, logical computing system.

Open-weight: An open-weight model is one whose trained parameters are released for others to download, modify, and deploy, even when the full training data or development process is not publicly available.

1. Alvin Wang Graylin: Compute adaptation, institutions, and data

By Alvin Wang Graylin, Non-Resident Honorary Senior Fellow on Technology, Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis

Compute constraints, WAICO, open-weight economics, safety priorities, robotics, data, and engagement options.

Key takeaways

• Compute scarcity is now a managed condition rather than a crisis. China’s labs still want more high-end silicon, but they have restructured around the constraint. The cost is measured not only in floating-point operations (FLOPs), a standard measure of computing work, but also in engineering time spent adapting models to domestically produced AI chips.

• Export controls and entity-list designations—not tariffs—are now the main grievance. Multiple interlocutors said tariffs have receded as a concern, making delisting the most requested goodwill signal—one framed as low-cost for Washington and highly symbolic for Beijing.

• Chinese frontier labs generally treat safety as a compliance obligation rather than an independent research priority, and several interlocutors argued that U.S. compute restrictions can undermine safety by leaving labs with fewer resources for testing and evaluation.

• At the regulatory level, Chinese authorities remain focused primarily on information security and content governance — ensuring that AI-generated content complies with state content rules and avoids politically sensitive topics — rather than on catastrophic misuse or the possibility that advanced AI systems could move beyond effective human control. As a result, proposals framed around such loss-of-control scenarios are unlikely to gain traction; those centered on shared mitigation of bad actors in cyber, bio, and chemical domains may prove more viable.

• At the institutional level, WAICO was the conference’s main development: 29 founding signatories, a Shanghai headquarters, no major Western democracy, and a keynote from Xi presenting it as a milestone. It is an infrastructure-and-capacity initiative aimed at the Global South, running alongside rather than within the UN track convened in Geneva two weeks earlier. Xi again emphasized open source and AI as a public good.

• At the same time, the open-weight consensus may be less durable than Chinese labs believe. Their leaders reported no government pressure to close models, even as public reporting indicated that Beijing was considering export restrictions on advanced domestic models.

Compute: real constraint, real workarounds

The clearest evidence of adaptation to China’s compute constraints appears at the compute layer. Practitioners repeatedly described Huawei’s accelerators as roughly two generations behind leading international chips, with one calling them “less than H100.” Frontier model training therefore still relies largely on international Blackwell-class hardware accessed through offshore partners. At the same time, the engineering work required to adapt and optimize models for domestic silicon adds another burden to China’s compute deficit.

The public record reinforces this picture. Huawei used WAIC to debut the Atlas 950 SuperPoD, an 8,192-chip system. The strategy is clear: compensate for weaker individual dies through system-level scale-up, interconnect, and cluster engineering. This is an expensive but viable route to higher training throughput, though it is considerably less effective at reducing inference costs per token.

The debate cuts both ways. Restriction advocates argue that the two-generation gap and domestic tuning overhead are precisely the intended effects, and congressional projections of indigenous H200-equivalent capability in 2028 suggest the policy is buying time. Critics counter that offshore training, scale-up architectures, and algorithmic efficiency are the adaptations the controls were meant to prevent—and that successful workarounds become permanent while U.S. export controls remain revisable.

My assessment is that the controls impose measurable costs and are not being cleanly circumvented at the frontier. But adaptation is now institutionalized, reducing the return on further tightening while raising the costs to bilateral trust and revenue earned by U.S. firms. The policy is working narrowly while losing ground more broadly.

Model layer: economics and openness

At the model layer, economics and openness are also reshaping the market. Domestic inference monetization remains weak, except in video generation, where Chinese consumers and businesses demonstrably pay. Text and general-assistant inference generate little meaningful domestic revenue. As a result, international inference demand has become the growth engine, with an increasing share of Chinese lab revenue coming from outside China. This matters for assessing the commercial effects of restricting Chinese model access abroad.

DeepSeek, meanwhile, is now partially state-owned and has no conventional business model. Its valuation rests on brand equity as a national champion and on the expectation that the state will underwrite its long-term success. It intends to remain open-weight and is moving toward multimodality on the view that multimodality is a prerequisite for AGI.

Across Chinese labs, AGI is defined instrumentally as “smart enough to do human work,” rather than as a conscious or godlike system. It is viewed as one long-term goal among several, not a singular technological end point. This difference in framing may fuel mutual misperceptions between Chinese practitioners and parts of the U.S. AI debate.

These pressures have also narrowed the field sharply. A year ago, the expo floor featured more than 100 models; that number has since fallen dramatically. Regional champions remain, but consolidation is well advanced.

Openness, however, appears to be driven more by commercial than political considerations. Lab leaders said they faced no government pressure to close weights and characterized Alibaba’s more closed posture on certain models as a business decision rather than a technical or political one.

Reuters and the Financial Times reported in July that Chinese authorities were considering tightening export controls on advanced AI models and semiconductor technology, following earlier meetings with major tech firms about restricting overseas access to China’s most capable models, including those not yet released. Either the labs are not yet in the loop, or the policy is contested internally, or the restriction under consideration is narrower than a general move to closed weights. All three readings have very different implications for the open-versus-closed debate, making this the most important issue to track over the next quarter.

Safety and governance: what Chinese actors actually prioritize

These technical and commercial shifts also shape how Chinese actors approach safety and governance. Contacts close to China’s regulatory apparatus described the operative definition of “safety” as security and information control. Attention to CBRNE misuse is comparatively thin, and loss-of-control risk remains largely absent from lab priorities, though it is gaining attention in some safety institutions. At the lab level, developers follow government rules and already view existing constraints as burdensome. Several argued that if safety were a genuine U.S. priority, compute availability would increase rather than decrease because resource-constrained labs are more likely to cut corners. Cooperation is possible, but it depends on framing.

Even within these constraints, there are openings for cooperation. An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)-style international standard for safety evaluation, potentially linked to the UN, drew unprompted support from multiple interlocutors—the most concrete multilateral opening I encountered. The clearest practical proposal emerged from a session on AGI cooperation, which made the week’s strongest case for governance interfaces rather than legal convergence. Drawing on private international law, the argument was that shared rulebooks are unnecessary if interfaces, adapters, and conflict rules exist. Cooperation without trust could rest on shared vocabularies and protocols, with the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement as a precedent. Mutual recognition and shared test suites could provide enforcement, producing a common incident taxonomy, reporting schema, and triage thresholds.

Yet the trust deficit remains the binding constraint. Interlocutors were willing to cooperate but doubted that the United States would honor agreements. A recurring observation was that AI diplomacy lacks a Kissinger-like figure with standing on both sides.

WAICO and the institutional architecture

The same emphasis on practical cooperation and capacity building is visible in the emerging institutional role for the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). Twenty-nine countries signed the founding agreement on July 16, one day before WAIC opened. Wang Yi signed for China, and Guterres attended. Headquartered in Shanghai, WAICO is an independent intergovernmental body invoking UN Charter principles. Reported founding members include Russia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Belarus, Serbia, Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela. In his first WAIC keynote in the summit’s nine-year history, Xi announced 5,000 AI training opportunities for participants from developing countries over five years, along with cooperation centers with ASEAN and the African Union.

At the same time, WAICO is emerging alongside the UN track. The first UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance convened in Geneva on July 6–7, marking the first dedicated meeting of all UN members on the subject. Guterres advanced a Global Fund for AI covering skills, data, and affordable compute, and said more than 20 member states had nominated centers for a UN-supported Global Network for AI Capacity Building. Among more than 1,500 submissions, most non-government groups ranked safety first, while governments prioritized capacity building.

This overlap between the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance and WAICO supports two competing interpretations. The competitive view is that WAICO is a parallel institution designed to set standards and lock in dependencies before the UN track produces anything binding; the absence of major Western democracies is the point. The complementary view is that WAICO’s agenda—capacity building, training, and compute and data access for developing states—closely matches the proposed UN Global Fund, creating an opportunity for integration rather than a fork.

My assessment, then, is that the competitive reading is right about intent and the complementary reading about substance. That argues for engagement rather than boycott. Ignoring WAICO would cede the Global South AI capacity agenda just as the UN has validated it as a priority. Observer status, technical participation in evaluation standards, and interoperability between WAICO programs and the proposed UN fund are lower-cost alternatives.

Subnational industrial policy

Below the international level, China’s AI expansion is also being driven by local industrial policy. Local governments provide office space, fast-tracked logistics, limited compute and telecom resources, and access to city and provincial leaders—the last of which is often described as the most valuable input. Within this system, regional leaders are consistently assessed on four metrics: job creation, business and tax-base growth, innovation output, and social stability. Every subnational AI policy choice maps back to these priorities.

Yet this support creates its own tension. Both central and local governments are seeking startup equity, while firms planning international expansion often resist, recognizing that state ownership can become a liability abroad—an underappreciated tension in China’s AI capital structure. At the same time, municipal incubators and AI education programs are proliferating rapidly.

Robotics: involution now, consolidation expected in 12 to 24 months

Local support is especially visible in robotics, where rapid expansion has brought both scale and intense competition. The expo featured more than 200 robotics firms, and participants openly described the sector as being in an involution phase, with consolidation expected within one to two years.

Unitree offers an important reference point. It is fully vertically integrated in component manufacturing, although roughly 80 percent of its assembly work remains manual. The company is trying to automate, but the current process, while archaic, is adequate at present production volumes. It expects costs to fall by around 80 percent over time. Unitree is also the only Chinese player currently able to ship globally with support infrastructure and partners in place, including parts replacement for 1.5 to 2 years. Even so, its 2025 volumes remain relatively small: approximately 30,000 to 40,000 quadruped robots, 5,000 to 10,000 full humanoids, and 5,000 to 10,000 non-legged humanoids. Its software and training work also remains limited, and leadership was reportedly skeptical of humanoids until relatively recently.

More broadly, the hardware and supply-chain advantage is real, durable, and underestimated in Washington. The genuine constraint is software, training, and manipulation policy—the layer most exposed to compute restrictions. Chinese embodied AI capability should therefore be measured by software progress, not unit shipments.

Beyond humanoids, non-humanoid service robots are already deployed commercially, and in major cities more than half of the vehicles on the road are electric. The physical-world deployment base is further ahead than many U.S. visitors expect.

Data: the most underrated asymmetry

Yet hardware and robotics are only part of the structural picture; data may be an even more consequential asymmetry. On healthcare access, one firm described free access to data covering roughly 300 million patients annually, spanning more than 4,000 test types and complete patient records. There is no analogous access regime in the United States or the European Union.

The capabilities presented were also substantial. A fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the president of Ruijin Hospital described findings from a 15-year cohort study of 150,000 people, including a model that predicted major adverse cardiac events over 10 years with reasonably strong accuracy (AUC of approximately 0.78), and a 25-protein panel that predicted 10-year mortality with very strong discriminatory performance (AUC of approximately 0.90).

The business model may also be evolving toward a “data dividend” model. Under this vision, hospital care would trend toward being free or paid for through data, while hospitals commercialize the resulting models and shift medicine from reactive treatment to prediction, prevention, and early intervention.

The compute debate has crowded out the data question. In health data, China’s advantage is structural, growing, and beyond the reach of export controls. It also strengthens the case for a cooperative global data pool: cross-site validation would benefit both sides scientifically without costing either side its strategic position.

Capital markets and exit paths

Turning these technical advantages into durable businesses, however, depends on financing and viable exit paths. The STAR Market (科创板) functions as the domestic exit venue and permits listing without profitability, although multiples remain well below international comparables.

That domestic route is further constrained by Beijing’s reluctance to see its leading firms list internationally, compressing the exit menu.

Hong Kong therefore retains its role as the financial bridge to global capital and is positioning itself as a compliant AI sandbox with an East-West standards role.

One indication of this role is Hong Kong’s deployment of HKPilot, a government document-processing copilot built on the locally developed HKGAI LLM. By November 2024, more than 800 officers across over 20 bureaus and departments were participating, and by April 2025 the trial had expanded to more than 70 government departments. HKGAI subsequently released V3 of its model in June 2026.

What Beijing is actually asking for

Taken together, these constraints and adaptations help explain the priorities Chinese interlocutors raised in discussions with the United States, ranked here by frequency and intensity.

The most frequent request centered around the removal of firms from sanctions, export-control, and risk lists. Alibaba and Tencent are lobbying against designations they consider unjustified, and delisting is seen as a cheap, legible signal of good faith.

Access to TSMC was presented as a more achievable request than access to EUV tools. Chinese contacts assessed domestically usable EUV as roughly five years away.

Interlocutors also expressed willingness to co-invest in the United States and in Global South AI infrastructure, preferring a new brand distinct from both the Belt and Road and the Marshall Plan.

They also raised reciprocal restraint on competitive practices. Beijing signaled willingness to push domestic firms to moderate the hyper-competitive export behavior they have been trained into domestically, acknowledging that these practices are alarming firms in every market they enter.

Huawei, however, was not part of the request of removal from the sanctions, export-control, and risk lists. The company has internally accepted its designation as permanent and does not expect that status to change.

Implications and judgment

The case for taking these openings seriously is that the requests are specific, ranked, and internally consistent. Delisting a small number of non-sensitive firms is reversible and verifiable, while interest in IAEA-style evaluation standards and mutual test recognition is technically substantive. The Global South co-investment offer aligns with WAICO’s program, and restraint on aggressive export practices would address concerns shared across the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, and India.

The skeptical case, however, is that each opening is low-cost for Beijing but consequential for Washington. Delisting transfers real capability in exchange for goodwill. China’s safety agenda remains centered on information control, ensuring that AI-generated content complies with state rules and avoids politically sensitive topics, and could legitimize content-governance norms the United States opposes. WAICO embeds Chinese standard-setting under multilateral cover, while possible Chinese controls on model exports suggest Beijing may adopt the same playbook centered on restrictions it condemns.

My judgment is that the skeptical case is right about motive but wrong about consequence. The test is not whether an arrangement is costless to Beijing, but whether it improves on the status quo and creates a new verification surface. A conditional pilot delisting, a shared incident vocabulary, and a jointly recognized evaluation suite all meet that test without requiring trust. The Incidents at Sea precedent matters precisely because it was concluded between adversaries who expected to remain adversaries.

The more fundamental objection, therefore, is that the United States lacks both an interlocutor structure capable of executing such a technical arrangement and a domestic political coalition that could sustain it. That is the first gap to address.

What to watch over the next 90 days

1. WAICO’s first substantive work program and whether any OECD member seeks observer status.

2. Whether the UN Global Fund for AI recommendation to the General Assembly creates a channel that intersects WAICO’s capacity-building agenda.

3. BIS action on the AI diffusion rule replacement, targeted for end of fiscal year, and the fate of the Banks amendment—the AI OVERWATCH Act, which would codify tighter controls on advanced AI-chip exports to countries of concern—in the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

4. Any movement on entity list removals, which would be the clearest available evidence that the delisting channel is live.

5. Robotics consolidation, including the first significant failure or acquisition among the 200-plus expo participants.

Additional observations

Apple is allegedly using Qwen models in Apple Intelligence, a claim partially corroborated by prior public reporting on the China deployment, although the current scope still requires confirmation. Tencent is reportedly acquiring Manus at a price above a competing Meta offer.

2. Paul Triolo: Hardware adaptation and China’s safety-evaluation ecosystem

By Paul Triolo, Non-Resident Honorary Senior Fellow on Technology, Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis

Advances across China’s AI hardware stack and the emergence of a distributed, specialized network of safety and evaluation institutions.

The 2026 WAIC in Shanghai highlighted major advances across China’s AI stack since the 2025 edition, which I also attended. President Xi Jinping’s opening speech framed the conference around two main themes: the benefits of AI diffusion, including to the Global South through the new 29-country World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO), and the need to keep AI safe and secure. Xi’s safety comments “could have been written by me,” a leading AI safety researcher quipped during a discussion on the margins of the conference.

The conference came as U.S.-China competition in AI hardware and models reached new highs, while the release of Anthropic’s Mythos model and debate over the released, safeguarded Fable 5 counterpart intensified U.S. questions about how to gate frontier releases. Soon after, the OpenAI GPT 6.0 model’s escape from its sandbox and attack on Hugging Face underscored the need for a regulatory regime around advanced models. Moonshot’s release of Kimi K3 just before WAIC also fueled U.S. debate over Chinese open-weight models. These issues ran through public panels, closed-door meetings, and sidebar conversations near the main venues.

What stood out during my tour of the exhibition was the sharp increase in the number of Chinese AI hardware developers offering GPU clusters for training and inference. Moore Threads, Biren, Enflame, MetaX, and Huawei displayed larger GPU or Ascend NPU arrays, typically labeled as tested or “ready” for leading Chinese models from DeepSeek, Moonshot, Zhipu, Alibaba, or MiniMax. Tight integration between hardware and model software was a central theme.

This does not mean all Chinese model developers are training advanced models on domestic hardware. Moonshot has allegedly accessed Nvidia Blackwell compute in Southeast Asia, while Zhipu has trained a version of GLM-5.2 on Huawei’s Ascend architecture. The Atlas 950 SuperPoD was displayed for the first time, and a Huawei engineer walked me through its technical design. Huawei’s system-level answer to weaker individual accelerators links up to 8,192 Ascend 950 NPUs through UnifiedBus, unified memory addressing, and high aggregate bandwidth, allowing the installation to behave more like one giant logical computer than a conventional GPU cluster. The architecture should be especially useful for communication-heavy mixture-of-experts (MoE) training and high-volume inference. Its earliest users, however, will likely be Huawei/Pangu, state-backed clouds, telecom operators, SOEs, and laboratories that need a fully domestic stack—not independent frontier labs with dependable Nvidia access.

Assuming Moonshot can obtain thousands of Blackwells, it will likely keep flagship pretraining on Nvidia, because CUDA maturity, proven scaling, stronger per-device performance, and researcher productivity outweigh Ascend’s strategic appeal. Moonshot and Alibaba would move workloads gradually—starting with inference, fine-tuning, reinforcement learning, overflow capacity, and redundant training runs—and shift major pretraining only once the 950 demonstrates sustained utilization and reliability, or Nvidia supply and regulatory risks become unacceptable. Zhipu can support a serious Ascend porting and capacity-reservation program after recent capital raises, but renting Huawei or state-cloud capacity and dual-porting selected models is more plausible than operating an entire 160-cabinet SuperPoD. The full Atlas 950 is not scheduled until the fourth quarter of 2026; once leading developers have tested it, however, it could be a game changer.

The broader outlook for Chinese GPU makers is therefore improving. SMIC is likely to expand advanced-node capacity in Shanghai, with the government working alongside SMIC, Huawei, and other chip designers to allocate it. By year-end, more domestic GPU clusters and Huawei 950 SuperPoDs should be available for training and inference. Chinese developers will have greater access to advanced Nvidia hardware outside China, more domestic training capacity, and more inference compute to commercialize models such as Kimi K3. WAIC also underscored the push for stronger business models as firms list or prepare to list in Shanghai and Hong Kong, raise capital, and expand capacity. The CXMT IPO will channel additional capital into expansion, including high-bandwidth memory. Business models, markets, capex, and flexibility were hallmarks of the exhibition.

AI Safety, major evolution in thinking since WAIC 2025

The panels, closed-door meetings, and sidebar conversations on AI safety also showed how much thinking has evolved since the Paris AI Action Summit and last year’s WAIC. Xi’s reference to AI safety was groundbreaking and signaled that China’s fast-growing safety community should now be taken seriously. Western debate has traditionally focused on catastrophic risks, loss of control, and misalignment. In China, anquan （安全; safety）has more often referred to public safety and social stability, with less attention to loss-of-control or national-security risks involving cyber operations or CBRN capabilities. WAIC suggested this is beginning to change.

Rather than creating a single equivalent of the UK AI Security Institute or the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation, Beijing is assembling a distributed network of frontier laboratories, governance institutes, standards organizations, and model evaluators. WAIC suggested that this ecosystem is maturing into a potentially important counterpart for international safety cooperation. China’s AI safety community has come a long way.

For much of the past two years, discussions about China’s approach to AI safety have focused on what appeared to be missing. Compared with the UKAISI or CAISI, China seemed to lack a single institution responsible for evaluating frontier AI systems before deployment. Safety research existed, regulators had established security assessment procedures for generative AI models, and leading universities published internationally on interpretability and alignment, but these activities appeared fragmented and often disconnected. The dominant question among foreign observers became: Where is China’s AI Safety Institute? As I noted last year, the emergence of the China AI Safety and Development Association (CnAISDA) at the Paris AI Action Summit was an important milestone in this process.

But more than one year later, discussions at the 2026 World AI Conference suggested that this question may have been the wrong one all along. Rather than unveiling a centralized institution modeled on Western counterparts, the CnAISDA was a network of organizations, and the 2026 WAIC highlighted a growing network of organizations that collectively perform increasingly important functions. Throughout the conference, in addition to CnAISDA, the Shanghai AI Laboratory, Tsinghua University’s Institute for AI International Governance, researchers associated with the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, standards bodies including CAICT and TC260, and major frontier AI developers appeared together in technical workshops, policy discussions and international dialogues. The picture that emerged was not one of institutional duplication, but of an increasingly specialized ecosystem in which different organizations contribute distinct capabilities.

This distributed model is not an accident. It reflects China’s broader approach to governing strategic technologies. Rather than concentrating authority in a single independent agency, Beijing frequently relies on overlapping institutions that combine research, industrial policy, standards development, and government coordination. The same pattern can be seen in semiconductors, quantum technologies, and biotechnology. AI safety increasingly appears to be following a similar trajectory.

Shanghai AI Laboratory: Building China’s Technical Evaluation Engine

At the WAIC in Shanghai, one of the most interesting presentations came from Professor Zhou Bowen, the Director of the Shanghai AI Laboratory (SAIL). SAIL has quietly emerged as perhaps the country’s most technically capable institution for evaluating frontier AI systems. Although widely known internationally for the InternLM family of open-weight language models, InternVL multimodal systems, and AI for Science initiatives that I have documented in my Substack, the laboratory’s significance extends well beyond model development. By training frontier-scale models itself, SAIL has developed precisely the engineering expertise required to evaluate increasingly capable AI systems.

This distinction matters. Evaluating frontier models involves far more than prompting public APIs or measuring benchmark performance. Researchers require access to distributed training infrastructure, inference pipelines, model checkpoints, activation data, and internal architectures. They need to understand how models behave under different decoding strategies, how safety fine-tuning affects downstream capabilities, and how evaluation benchmarks themselves can become contaminated. Institutions that build frontier models inevitably acquire expertise that cannot easily be replicated through external testing alone.

SAIL has complemented this expertise by developing one of China’s most sophisticated model evaluation infrastructures. OpenCompass has evolved into a comprehensive evaluation framework covering hundreds of language and multimodal benchmarks across both open and proprietary models. Rather than treating evaluation as a one-off benchmarking exercise, OpenCompass increasingly resembles shared scientific infrastructure, enabling reproducible comparisons across successive generations of frontier models. Its importance within China’s AI ecosystem parallels the role played by platforms such as HELM or LM Arena internationally, while extending more deeply into Chinese-language evaluation and multimodal systems.

The laboratory has also expanded its explicit focus on AI safety. Through its AI45 initiative, SAIL now conducts research spanning trustworthy AI, embodied AI safety, interpretability, AI for Science safety, and broader questions surrounding advanced AI systems. While much of this work remains technically oriented, it reflects an important evolution. Safety is no longer treated primarily as content moderation or compliance with existing regulations. Instead, SAIL frames safety increasingly as an engineering challenge requiring systematic evaluation throughout the model development lifecycle.

Zhou’s presentation at WAIC 2026 demonstrated how quickly China’s technical evaluation capabilities are maturing. Rather than focusing on AI governance principles or regulatory frameworks, Zhou emphasized the engineering challenge of evaluating increasingly capable frontier models and AI agents throughout the model lifecycle. His framework integrated capability assessment, safety evaluation, agent behavior, tool use, and continuous testing into a unified evaluation pipeline, reflecting the perspective of a frontier model developer rather than a policymaker. This approach is particularly significant because it suggests that organizations such as SAIL are developing the technical infrastructure—including evaluation platforms such as OpenCompass, benchmark engineering and large-scale testing methodologies—needed to systematically characterize the capabilities and failure modes of frontier models. In many respects, SAIL appears to be evolving into China’s closest analogue to an engineering-focused evaluation laboratory, where safety is treated as an extension of model development rather than simply a regulatory compliance exercise. The emphasis is on building scalable evaluation systems that can keep pace with rapidly advancing foundation models and increasingly autonomous AI agents.

By contrast, the work emerging from Tsinghua University’s Institute for AI International Governance (I-AIIG) and Zeng Yi’s Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance begins from a different premise: defining what constitutes frontier AI risk and how those risks should be incorporated into national and international governance frameworks. Tsinghua has focused on developing international evaluation standards, safety capability maturity models and mechanisms for cross-border cooperation, while Zeng Yi’s group has pushed China’s frontier risk research toward questions of agentic autonomy, AI for Science, embodied AI, catastrophic and even existential risks through initiatives such as ForesightSafety Bench.

Their work increasingly resembles that of organizations like CAISI or the International AI Safety Report community, emphasizing comprehensive risk taxonomies and scientifically grounded evaluation methodologies rather than benchmark engineering alone. Taken together, these two communities illustrate an emerging division of labor within China’s AI safety ecosystem: Shanghai is building much of the technical machinery needed to evaluate frontier models, while Beijing is defining the conceptual frameworks, governance architecture and international standards that determine which risks should be evaluated and why. The challenge now is institutional—integrating these complementary strengths into a trusted national capability for independent frontier model evaluation, comparable to the role that organizations such as METR, Apollo Research and the UK AI Security Institute are beginning to play in Western AI governance. During my panel presentation on prospects for international cooperation, I mentioned the proposal from Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis for a self-regulatory organization (SRO) in the United States that over time could be a concept embraced more globally, and I also stressed the need for independent third-party evaluation organizations as part of an emerging consensus in the United States and the broader AI safety community.

For China, however, WAIC also highlighted several challenges in this area. SAIL’s strengths, for example, also reveal its limitations. Despite its technical sophistication, it remains simultaneously a frontier model developer, a government-supported research institution, a commercial operation, and a potential evaluator of competing models. There is little public evidence that it possesses statutory authority to demand pre-deployment access to proprietary models developed by Alibaba, Tencent, DeepSeek, Zhipu, or Baidu, or that its evaluation findings automatically influence regulatory approval. In other words, SAIL has accumulated much of the technical capacity associated with a frontier model evaluator without yet occupying the institutional role of an independent national evaluation authority.

Perhaps the most significant implication of WAIC 2026 is that China is no longer asking whether frontier AI requires dedicated safety institutions. That debate has largely been settled. The more important questions now concern how responsibilities should be divided across an increasingly diverse institutional landscape, how evaluation methodologies should evolve alongside rapidly advancing frontier models, and how China’s emerging ecosystem should engage with counterparts abroad.

For international AI governance, this evolution matters enormously. As the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore and others continue building their own frontier model evaluation capabilities, China is constructing a parallel—though institutionally distinct—architecture. The differences are real, particularly regarding independence, transparency and regulatory authority. Yet the underlying technical challenges are remarkably similar. Evaluating increasingly autonomous, multimodal and scientifically capable AI systems will require common methodologies, shared benchmarks and ongoing dialogue across national boundaries. Some of this will begin happening when the United States and China meet in September for the first time to discuss real frontier model guardrails and regulation. This will not be easy, but Chinese organizations now have much more to bring to the table than was the case in Paris in early 2025 or the WAIC in July 2025.

Competition over frontier AI capabilities is likely to intensify. But if WAIC 2026 demonstrated anything, it is that competition need not preclude cooperation on the science of evaluation itself. Indeed, the emergence of increasingly sophisticated AI safety ecosystems on both sides may finally provide the institutional counterparts necessary for sustained technical engagement on one of the defining governance challenges of the AI era.

3. Kristy Loke: Openness as China’s strategic narrative

By Kristy Loke, Research Fellow, Machine Learning Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS) program

Beijing’s open-AI strategy and its implications for competition, governance, ecosystem power, and selective U.S.-China coordination.

Openness as a long-term commitment

A popular question among China watchers is: what does China want from AI? At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), President Xi Jinping offered his clearest answer so far. China wants to partake in, be a leader in, and share the benefits of AI – and it wants to do so through a strategy of openness. Xi summarized China’s global AI contributions in a four‑point framework – deepening the strategy of openness and promoting win–win development, improving risk awareness and ensuring safety, security, and controllability of AI, encouraging multiculturalism, and promoting consensus-based global governance – with openness sitting at the heart of all four.

Whether future Chinese AI takes the form of open‑weight AI releases, which has become the focus of recent debates, is almost beside the point; the commitment is more fundamental. Openness is a long‑term orientation: not just via open‑weight models, but by encouraging Chinese AI firms to keep sharing the know-how, infrastructure, and resources for others to build, own and deploy AI. China’s leaders believe there are enough benefits from AI to go around, and that openness is the path to diffusion and value creation. By defining its AI vision around openness, Beijing implicitly rejects an AI arms‑race framing in which a few months’ frontier AI model lead is seen as decisive.

How will China govern openness?

Analysts have often portrayed Chinese leaders and regulators as reckless, anxious, or rigid in balancing AI development and governance. Recently, this framing has resurfaced in warnings about reflexive overregulation or blanket bans on frontier open models. So far, the evidence suggests otherwise.

Since 2023, Beijing has pursued a pro‑governance and pro‑development approach. The AI‑Generated Content Interim Measures laid the groundwork for a pre‑ and post‑deployment transparency regime, with a focus on controlling prohibited, harmful, or politically sensitive AI-generated material, and were paired with a State Council message for regulators to tread lightly and smartly: grasp emerging risks, issue timely and narrow prohibitions, and avoid deterring good‑faith innovation. Within this context, models such as DeepSeek-V3, GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 managed to emerge. Remarkably, this commitment to governance has not prevented China’s AI model sector from developing, keeping up, and at times, leading.

For open-weight AI, we should expect a similar balance: prohibiting clear misuse and unchecked capabilities, encouraging experimentation where care can be demonstrated, and continuing to explore risk tiers, pre-deployment testing, disclosure, and post-deployment monitoring. If that balance holds, the incentive for a blanket ban remains low.

From containment to an open AI strategy

China’s embrace of open innovation predates the LLM wave. Under repeated rounds of tech containment since 2018 – from Trump’s ZTE and Huawei sanctions to Biden’s tightening chip controls – Beijing was forced to rethink its tech and innovation priorities. Within weeks of the ZTE shock, Xi told leading scientists that core technologies such as semiconductors could not be “obtained, bought, or begged for,” prompting debate over which parts of the globalized chip supply chain had to be brought home. The debate ultimately landed on the side of the importance of core tech indigenization and continued links with innovation channels and sources abroad. Xi’s WAIC reference to “Chinese‑made intelligence” (中国智造) captures this ambition: to be a key exporter of AI capability by being a reliable, trustworthy and relatively affordable supplier, in turn benefiting from both business and creative ideas and innovation from abroad.

The strength of Chinese open models reinforced this open orientation. When DeepSeek-V3 was released in late 2024 as a cheaper, more manipulable alternative to proprietary U.S. systems, the U.S. stock market and global developers took notice. In line with its pragmatic strategy, Beijing and its advisers moved to further center openness in China’s AI posture at home and abroad. This is evidenced by growing legal discourses over how to best govern open-weight AI to help it develop safely and by various Qiushi pieces acknowledging open-source AI as central to China’s AI strength. Given this context, Xi’s WAIC speech is best read as the culmination of that evolution, not a sudden pivot.

Openness as China’s AI edge—and a challenge for the United States

China’s commitment to openness serves both domestic and external goals. At home, openness promotes more accessible AI and faster innovation‑led economic transformation. Abroad, openness and shared benefits are framed as an antidote to an “AI Iron Curtain,” positioning China’s open models as affordable and reliable options for developers worldwide.

By contrast, the United States is quietly starting to lose three important competitions by over‑emphasizing frontier AI lead and containment as a winning strategy, and in the process, inadvertently prioritizing tech supremacy, exclusivity, and unilateral actions. In trying to protect and widen the United States’ frontier AI edge by any means possible, the United States is also making itself less competitive on AI accessibility, cost, ecosystem pull, and soft power, thus losing both friends and influence. At home, the lack of an inclusive and distributive vision for AI also deepened economic and environmental anxiety among a growing part of the population. While it is not too late for the United States to reconsider, an AI strategy centered around openness will look quite different from the one it has pursued over the past decade.

The narrow window for U.S.–China AI coordination

Recent weeks show both the pace of progress and the sharpness of emerging risks. GLM-5.2 and Kimi K3 were announced just before WAIC. Soon after, Hugging Face disclosed a cyber incident involving OpenAI in which GLM-5.2 was used defensively after a U.S. proprietary model refused requests for cyber defense. The episode highlights cross-border entanglement and growing challenges of control and security. It also undercuts the idea that U.S.-China AI development and governance are inherently zero-sum: models from one country are already defending against vulnerabilities in another.

From WAIC, notably, Xi’s framing of AI risks as “internal” and “external” (to AI systems) overlaps with concerns in the West over frontier AI control and misalignment risks, and misuse risks, even if the language differs. The reality is that the two are facing a similar and growing set of frontier AI risks, and as the leading AI powers, have the most to lose from unsafe AI development and deployment. Only by recognizing this reality can Washington move from containment instincts to much-needed selective coordination with Beijing around such risks. The time to act is now.

4. Ran Guo: Data governance and the economics of health AI

By Ran Guo, Affiliated Researcher, Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis

Data governance, trusted data spaces, and the commercial logic that requires health-AI products to prove system-level savings for public insurance.

Over ten days, from July 9–19, I attended events in Beijing and Shanghai: the 2026 China Internet Conference (“Data for AI” and “AI + Health” forums), a Tongji University workshop on AI safety and security, and WAIC. Two themes stood out: data governance and AI + health.

1. Data governance: imagination, incorporation, and new practices

My strongest impression is that many practitioners, analysts, and policymakers approach AI governance through data policy, especially data use and security. China’s developmental and regulatory approach has moved from “大数据” and “数字化” (“big data” and “digitalization”) toward “数智化” (digital intelligence or AI-enabled digitalization), meaning data-driven, AI-integrated industrial transformation. High-level forums discussed agent guardrails, safety by design, and cybersecurity, but industry sessions repeatedly returned to high-quality datasets, sharing infrastructure, and agent-facing data management as bottlenecks to adoption.

I mentioned in an earlier paper that China’s data policy was centered on three moves: data assetization, data exchanges, and public data franchising. The conferences highlighted several new developments that are woven into China’s data governance strategy:

• Scenario-based data management. Speakers repeatedly argued against building datasets before identifying potential use cases. Their preferred logic is to start from concrete demand—an industrial, administrative, or clinical scenario—and work backward to compile data catalogs, sharing mechanisms, and model architecture. Palantir’s Forward Deployed Engineer position and its ontological modelling came up repeatedly as instruments to specify use scenarios and manage corporate data resources.

• High-quality, interoperable datasets as the bottleneck. The industrial breakthroughs will depend on access to private-domain data and the ability to make that data usable across organizations. The issue is not simply quantity, but interoperability: ownership, structure, format, annotation, and domain context all vary. Several speakers described traits of future data systems designed for AI agents rather than conventional databases: multimodal data, model-data resonance, and ontological modeling.

• Trusted data spaces. This concept, which is being widely tested across sectors, refers to a secure environment where participants share datasets on premises to build products or models, then export the resulting products without seeing the original datasets. I visited one in Shanghai; it resembles a normal computer room with additional security settings. The biggest obstacle is incentives: companies are reluctant to place their key data in the space. Some speakers, e.g., Gao Xinmin (高新民), emphasized adding a data interoperability layer and building industry-specific data commons to incentivize sharing.

2. Health AI: sustainable innovation depends on commercialization and data interoperability

Health is a priority for both China’s data and AI strategies because of its public importance and transformative potential. Better data sharing could improve diagnosis, reduce errors, streamline triage, expand access in grassroots hospitals, and support continuous patient management. The sector also appears more willing to cooperate than many others. But implementation bottlenecks are clear, especially the lack of a payment model for AI-health products. Across two health forums and conversations with five practitioners in hospitals, medical-device companies, and health-data firms, a shared business logic emerged:

At this stage, AI saves money but does not grow the pie for hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. AI’s revenue potential derives from cost savings generated by greater efficiency and accuracy and by reducing trial and error in diagnostics, operations, and research.

This observation has important implications for the business strategies of AI-health enterprises:

• The key question is: Who pays for innovation? Hospitals may receive payment for releasing datasets, primarily from technology and pharmaceutical companies. Technology companies need medical data for model training, while pharmaceutical companies need it to collect post-market real-world evidence and satisfy regulatory requirements. For both groups, hospitals may be the entry point for scaling products, but the real payer is often public health insurance (医保), with commercial insurance playing a secondary but expanding role.

• The industry should no longer expect 医保 to reimburse AI products in a separate category. To commercialize, companies must instead prove that deploying their AI products saves the insurance system money overall—what insiders call “big-picture accounting,” or health economics (算大账). To do that, they must use AI to avoid what already costs the system real money: missed or mistaken diagnoses, unnecessary procedures, etc.

• AI substitution has to be attached to a reimbursable object or process rather than replacing the doctor. Replacing doctors, or increasing efficiency so that they can see more patients, does not by itself create a sufficient revenue stream for AI-health companies. Revenue can be substantial, however, when AI replaces or is bundled into something already paid for—auxiliary devices, consumables, diagnostic equipment, or inefficient procedures. This is why specialized, single-purpose AI is often more monetizable than general medical foundation models, and why many industry-facing medical AI companies are more interested in the former. One example I heard was imaging AI sold to Philips: once embedded as part of the hardware cost, it can be reimbursed through the medical-device pathway.

• The AI + health business model cannot simply be to “build a general medical model and wait for adoption.” It must identify where AI can substitute for costly processes, prove savings at the insurance-system level, and then secure reimbursement so that adoption can scale.

Beijing Hardens Language, Operations at Second Thomas Shoal

On July 20, Chinese and Philippine military personnel came to blows alongside the BRP Sierra Madre, the vessel the Philippines grounded at Second Thomas Shoal (仁爱礁, which the Philippines calls Ayungin Shoal) in 1999 in the South China Sea (SCS). The Philippine military said China Coast Guard (CCG) personnel in a rigid-hull inflatable boat struck a Philippine Navy sailor on the head with a wooden baton, injuring the sailor and damaging the boat. The CCG said the two Philippine boats ignored warnings and rammed its patrol craft, and that “Philippine personnel first used oars, long poles, and other implements to maliciously attack Chinese law enforcement personnel.”

Neither side has released full unedited footage, and the Philippine military says the version Beijing circulated was “spliced or incomplete.”

China Coast Guard Personnel Strike Philippine Navy With Wooden Batons in Ayungin Shoal Incident

The clash broke two years of relative calm. Under the provisional resupply arrangement reached in July 2024, the Philippines ran 13 rotation-and-resupply missions through March 4, 2026—roughly every six weeks—and Philippine officials said those runs passed without dangerous encounters.

The clash also overlaps with the 10th anniversary of the 2016 UNCLOS arbitral tribunal award, which struck down China’s expansion claims in the SCS, including over Second Thomas Shoal. On July 11, the United States and 13 other governments issued a joint statement to commemorate the award, calling on China to respect the findings. China’s foreign ministry responded the next day, calling the award “an illegal and void scrap of paper with no binding force” (一张非法无效没有拘束力的废纸). Chinese state media went further, calling the arbitration a “political farce dressed up in legal disguise.”

Among other things, the 2016 arbitral tribunal ruled that:

• Second Thomas Shoal is a low-tide elevation, meaning it cannot be claimed as sovereign territory by any state on its own.

• The shoal lies within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

• China’s “nine-dash line” claim has no legal basis under UNCLOS to the extent it exceeds the convention’s maritime entitlements.

• China interfered with the Philippines’ lawful exercise of its rights in the SCS, including on Second Thomas Shoal.

China continues to claim the area as part of its “historic rights,” and has maintained that Philippine activities there are unlawful. As a result, there have been repeated confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels around the shoal.

CCA Analysis: Beijing is hardening its rhetoric and response to the Philippines’ exercise of its lawful maritime rights on Second Thomas Shoal. The CCG’s July 20 statement included new language not found in previous announcements regarding Second Thomas Shoal, labeling the incident as a “malicious attack” (恶意攻击). The PRC foreign ministry called Philippine actions a “violent assault” (暴力袭击). For comparison, in June 2024, when Chinese personnel boarded Philippine boats armed with knives and axes and severed a Filipino sailor’s thumb, CCG statements only referred to a “dangerous approach” and “deliberate collision,” and the PRC defense ministry acknowledged only that stones had been thrown.

The wording matters because of the claim riding on it. On July 21, the CCG said it had “permitted” the Philippines to move the wounded sailor by small boat to a Philippine coast guard vessel, and that it had “supervised the transfer from start to finish.” Manila rejected the framing a day later, saying the Philippines “does not need, nor does it require, any foreign nation’s permission” inside its own exclusive economic zone, and any claim of permission is “a false narrative intended to project illegitimate authority.”

The PLA appears to have stayed out of the fray. The operation was carried out by the CCG and framed by the foreign ministry, a familiar division of labor that sustains pressure while staying below the threshold of kinetic conflict that might invoke the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty. China’s defense ministry did not issue a statement and did not respond to press queries about the incident. The PLA Southern Theater Command issued a statement after the clash, protesting Philippine-organized “joint patrols” with “outside countries” but did not mention Second Thomas Shoal.

Beijing’s rejection of the arbitration ruling remains unchanged. A decade after the landmark binding judgement, China’s intransigence has caused material harm to its relations with the Philippines in diplomatic and soft power terms. But it has allowed the CCG and PLA to hone a new brand of gray-zone coercion and operational tactics. From Beijing’s perspective, the benefits of rejecting the ruling outweigh the diplomatic blowback, because acceptance would deprive China of its core claims to waters and territory in the SCS.

PLA Initiates Live-Fire Artillery Drills near Taiwan

From July 23 to 24, the PLA Eastern Theater Command (ETC) conducted live-fire artillery drills near Taiwan, in apparent response to a speech by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te. The exercise occurred east and south of Dongshan Island, off Fujian province, and involved troops from the ETC’s 73^rd Group Army. It reportedly involved the amphibious assault ship Hubei, which undertook landing and take-off training and employed army helicopters.

The drills appeared to be in response to a speech given by Lai during the DPP’s annual party convention several days earlier, in which Lai called for Taiwan to oppose a “red terror” by China, adding that the DPP would never allow a “democratic Taiwan” to “regress into a ‘China’ Taiwan.” The speech drew criticism from the PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which said the remarks “expose Lai’s unchanging ‘Taiwan independence’ stance,” and that Lai had “recklessly challenged the ‘One China’ principle.”

CCA Analysis: China has boxed itself in by responding militarily to every major speech by Lai. Digging in its heels may stoke nationalist sentiment in China and help justify increased PLA training requirements near Taiwan. But this approach also takes cross-Strait relations down a narrower path with fewer avenues for de-escalation that do not involve military escalation. 2028 remains a pivotal year in both Taiwan and the United States, with presidential elections determining the future trajectory of peace and conflict across the Strait. Yet there is little evidence that Beijing is amenable to creative approaches or policies that involve engagement with Taiwanese authorities.

China’s Third Hospital Ship Sails on Its First Overseas Mission

On July 22, the PLA Navy hospital ship Auspicious Ark (吉祥方舟, hull number 868) departed a naval port in Qingdao for Africa and South Asia to carry out Mission Harmony-2026 (和谐使命-2026), the vessel’s first overseas medical deployment.

This is the twelfth Mission Harmony deployment since 2010. The first ten were conducted by the Peace Ark (和平方舟), while the Silk Road Ark (丝路方舟) conducted the eleventh, a 234-day voyage covering roughly 36,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Islands and Latin America—the longest in the series to date. The Auspicious Ark is the PLA Navy’s third 10,000-ton-class hospital ship, first unveiled in May 2025. With its entry into service, each of the PLA Navy’s three theater commands now operates one hospital ship.

CCA Analysis: Humanitarian deployments are not in themselves a new development. It is the tempo that merits attention. Deployments of three different vessels in two years represent a high operational tempo. The Peace Ark returned to port in January 2025; the Silk Road Ark deployed from September 2025 to April 2026; and the Auspicious Ark’s current deployment is scheduled to run into early 2027. With three hulls available, Beijing can now keep one ship forward-deployed on a near-continuous basis while a second undergoes refit and a third remains on domestic duty. What was once an episodic goodwill voyage has become a routine, standing presence.

The tonnage and configuration of these vessels are calibrated for long-term deployments. According to the Center for International Maritime Security, the U.S. Navy’s USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy each carry roughly 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms, compared to approximately 300 beds and eight operating rooms aboard the Peace Ark. This is an instrument for securing strategic access rather than generating wartime medical capacity, providing a relatively low-cost means of building familiarity with foreign ports and cultivating local goodwill.

The program’s implementation details reveal its broader significance. During its last deployment, the Silk Road Ark conducted joint drills with the Fijian, Tongan, and Brazilian navies in addition to providing outpatient medical work. The PRC Ministry of National Defense has described the Auspicious Ark as having “a functional layout adapted to the demands of preparing for combat” (具有适应备战打仗需求的功能布局). Should Mission Harmony-2026 follow the same template, it would amount to naval engagement with doctors aboard and would represent an opportunity for the PLA Navy to rehearse wartime medical evacuation and treatment through military diplomacy.

Competition is inevitable—and, when governed wisely, can be a powerful driver of innovation, resilience, and human progress. Strategic instability, however, is neither inevitable nor desirable. It can and should be managed through better institutions, clearer guardrails, and sustained dialogue. The central challenge of statecraft in the age of artificial intelligence is therefore not whether to compete, but how to govern competition wisely.

Technology competition between the United States and China has entered a fundamentally new phase. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, critical minerals, cloud infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing no longer operate as separate policy domains. They increasingly form an integrated strategic ecosystem in which decisions affecting one technology shape outcomes across many others. Yet the institutions governing this competition remain fragmented across agencies, regulatory authorities, and policy silos that were designed for an earlier era.

Three structural shifts have outpaced the existing governance architecture.

First, technology competition has become an integrated governance challenge. Export controls, industrial policy, AI governance, biosecurity, critical minerals, and supply-chain resilience are increasingly interconnected. Policies designed in isolation now generate cascading effects across the broader technology ecosystem.

Second, artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed the nature of technology governance. AI is no longer simply another strategic technology. As a general-purpose capability, it accelerates innovation across semiconductors, biotechnology, scientific research, defense, and advanced manufacturing while introducing new risks related to frontier models, cybersecurity, biosecurity, and CBRN misuse. These challenges cannot be addressed through export controls alone. They require integrated governance.

Third, bureaucratic fragmentation has become a strategic vulnerability. On both the U.S. and Chinese sides, responsibility for technology policy is distributed across multiple institutions with different authorities, incentives, and technical expertise. As technologies converge, fragmented governance limits strategic coordination, slows policy adaptation, and increases the risk of reactive escalation.

These structural changes require a new institutional response.

This special issue proposes establishing a Board of Technology Stability (BoTS) as a permanent mechanism for governing technology competition across export controls, AI governance, biosecurity, semiconductor policy, critical minerals, and supply-chain resilience. Rather than creating another layer of bureaucracy, the Board would integrate existing capabilities, align political leadership with technical expertise, and provide a standing framework for managing strategic competition with greater discipline, coherence, and strategic foresight.

The Board should pursue four immediate priorities.

First, modernize export controls through a standing technical review process that keeps pace with technological change while preserving restrictions on genuinely strategic capabilities.

Second, strengthen supply-chain stability through reciprocal guardrails for critical minerals and rare earths, including civilian end-use assurances, trusted-company licensing arrangements, and longer planning horizons that reduce unnecessary uncertainty while protecting national-security interests.

Third, place AI governance and biosecurity at the center of technology strategy by integrating frontier-model evaluation, AI safety, biosecurity, cybersecurity, and CBRN risk management into a common governance framework.

Fourth, establish a permanent technology dialogue to support crisis communication, improve policy transparency, and develop confidence-building measures where mutual interests exist, particularly regarding AI safety, biosecurity, and strategic supply chains.

The anticipated meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi provides a timely opportunity to launch such an initiative. A Board of Technology Stability would complement emerging trade and investment mechanisms by providing a durable institutional architecture for the defining technologies of the twenty-first century. Its purpose is not to reduce competition, but to ensure that competition strengthens innovation rather than undermines stability.

Competition is inevitable—and welcome. Strategic instability is optional. Through stronger institutions, wiser governance, and sustained dialogue, technology competition can become not only a source of national strength, but also a foundation for long-term strategic stability.

I. Introduction

Technology competition is rapidly becoming the defining feature of the U.S.–China relationship. Increasingly, it shapes not only economic competitiveness but also national security, industrial policy, scientific leadership, and the future balance of geopolitical influence. Yet while technology itself has evolved dramatically, the institutions governing it have changed far more slowly.

Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, cloud infrastructure, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and supply chains have become deeply interconnected. Export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment now influence AI capability; AI accelerates advances in biotechnology; critical minerals underpin both advanced computing and clean technologies; and supply-chain resilience has become inseparable from economic security and national security. Decisions that once affected individual sectors now increasingly reverberate across the broader technology ecosystem.

Existing governance structures were not designed for this rapidly evolving environment.

Most technology policies continue to be developed through separate bureaucratic channels responsible for export controls, industrial policy, AI regulation, public health, scientific research, investment, diplomacy, and national security. These institutions remain highly capable within their respective domains, but increasingly lack mechanisms for integrated decision-making across technologies whose strategic implications have become inseparable.

The rapid emergence of frontier AI further amplifies this challenge. Artificial intelligence is no longer simply another strategic technology. It is becoming a general-purpose capability that accelerates scientific discovery across nearly every frontier discipline, including biotechnology, materials science, robotics, and defense. At the same time, AI introduces new governance challenges involving frontier-model evaluation, cyber resilience, AI-enabled biological design, and CBRN misuse. These issues cannot be addressed through export controls alone. They require sustained coordination among technical experts, regulators, security agencies, and diplomatic institutions.

Institutional fragmentation compounds these challenges. On both sides, responsibility for technology policy is distributed across multiple ministries and agencies with overlapping responsibilities but limited mechanisms for integrated strategic coordination. As technologies become increasingly interconnected, fragmentation itself becomes a source of strategic risk.

The consequences are already visible. Export controls have been followed by reciprocal restrictions on critical minerals and rare earths. Licensing decisions increasingly shape investment, industrial planning, AI infrastructure, and global supply chains. Individual measures may each be justified on national-security grounds, yet collectively they reveal a broader reality: technology competition has become an integrated governance challenge rather than a collection of discrete policy disputes.

The central question facing policymakers is therefore no longer whether strategic competition should continue. It almost certainly will. The more important question is whether existing institutions remain capable of governing that competition in ways that strengthen national security while preserving innovation, reducing unintended economic disruption, and maintaining strategic stability.

This special issue argues that they do not. Instead, it proposes establishing a Board of Technology Stability as a permanent institutional mechanism capable of integrating technology governance across export controls, AI governance, biosecurity, critical minerals, supply-chain resilience, and strategic dialogue. Rather than replacing existing agencies, the Board would bridge political authority and technical expertise, align policies that are currently managed through separate bureaucratic channels, and provide a durable framework for governing technology competition in the age of artificial intelligence.

II. Three Governance Gaps in the AI Era

The United States does not lack technology strategy. Nor does it lack technical expertise. What it increasingly lacks is an institutional framework capable of governing technology competition as an integrated strategic challenge.

Three governance gaps have emerged as technology competition has evolved. Together, they explain why existing institutions, while individually effective, are becoming collectively inadequate.

The Integration Gap

Technology competition is no longer organized around individual industries or technologies. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, critical minerals, cloud infrastructure, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and supply chains increasingly reinforce one another.

Semiconductor manufacturing capacity shapes AI development. AI accelerates biotechnology and scientific discovery. Critical minerals underpin advanced computing, clean technologies, and defense manufacturing. Cloud infrastructure determines access to computing power. Supply-chain resilience influences both national security and economic competitiveness.

These interactions have transformed technology competition into an interconnected strategic ecosystem.

Policy, however, remains organized around individual sectors and agencies. Export controls, industrial policy, AI governance, biosecurity, investment screening, and diplomacy continue to operate largely in parallel. Decisions taken within one policy domain increasingly generate consequences across many others.

The result is an expanding integration gap between the technologies themselves and the institutions responsible for governing them.

The Capability Gap

The second gap reflects the emergence of artificial intelligence as a general-purpose technology.

Unlike previous generations of strategic technologies, frontier AI accelerates progress across virtually every scientific and industrial domain. It influences semiconductor design, pharmaceutical discovery, biotechnology, autonomous systems, cyber operations, advanced manufacturing, and military capability simultaneously.

This convergence fundamentally changes the nature of technology governance.

National security now depends not only on controlling access to hardware but also on understanding frontier-model capabilities, evaluating AI systems, mitigating cyber vulnerabilities, managing AI-enabled biological risks, and establishing safeguards against CBRN misuse.

These challenges extend well beyond traditional export-control institutions.

No single agency currently possesses the authority or expertise to integrate AI governance, model evaluation, biosecurity, export controls, scientific research, industrial policy, and international engagement into a coherent strategic framework.

As AI continues to evolve, this capability gap will become increasingly consequential.

The Coordination Gap

The third challenge is institutional.

On both sides, technology governance remains fragmented across multiple ministries and agencies.

In the United States, Commerce, Treasury, State, Defense, Energy, HHS, NIST, the White House, and the Intelligence Community each contribute essential capabilities but operate under different statutory authorities, organizational cultures, and policy objectives.

China faces a comparable challenge. Technology policy spans MOFCOM, NDRC, MIIT, CAC, MOST, the National Health Commission, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, and the broader Party leadership.

These institutions were designed to optimize individual policy domains rather than govern an increasingly interconnected technology ecosystem.

The consequence is an expertise-authority gap.

Technical institutions often possess the deepest understanding of frontier technologies but lack the authority to coordinate government-wide policy. Political leaders possess decision-making authority but rarely receive integrated assessments spanning AI, semiconductors, biotechnology, critical minerals, industrial policy, and supply-chain resilience simultaneously.

Technology competition therefore risks becoming increasingly reactive rather than strategic.

Why the Current Framework Is Under Strain

These three governance gaps increasingly reinforce one another.

The October 2022 semiconductor controls illustrate both the strengths and limitations of the existing framework. They successfully protected the most advanced technologies while demonstrating unprecedented coordination among allies. At the same time, rapid technological progress has outpaced portions of the original framework. Chinese manufacturers have continued advancing beyond several original thresholds, while subsequent licensing decisions—including H200-class GPUs, high-bandwidth memory controls, and repeated “is informed” letters—have required increasingly case-specific adjustments.

At the same time, China’s response has expanded beyond semiconductors. Export controls on rare earths and magnets have demonstrated that supply-chain leverage now operates in both directions. Decisions affecting semiconductor manufacturing increasingly shape critical-mineral policy, investment decisions, AI infrastructure, and industrial planning.

These developments do not suggest that export controls have failed. Rather, they demonstrate that technology competition has become too interconnected to be governed through export controls alone.

The central policy challenge has therefore shifted. It is no longer simply how to design better export controls. It is how to govern strategic competition across an increasingly integrated technology ecosystem while preserving national security, sustaining innovation, reducing unintended economic costs, and maintaining strategic stability.

This is the role a Board of Technology Stability is designed to perform.

III. A Board of Technology Stability

The three governance gaps identified above point to a common conclusion. The United States does not need another export-control mechanism. It needs a governance architecture capable of integrating technology policy across the strategic technologies that increasingly define economic competitiveness, national security, and geopolitical influence.

This paper therefore proposes establishing a Board of Technology Stability (BoTS) with the Chinese side as a permanent institutional mechanism for governing technology competition in the age of artificial intelligence.

The objective of the Board is straightforward: to strengthen national security while sustaining innovation, reducing unintended economic disruption, and improving strategic stability.

BoTS would not replace existing departments or regulatory authorities. Nor would it weaken legitimate competition or dilute national-security protections. Instead, it would provide the institutional capacity to coordinate policies that are currently managed through fragmented bureaucratic structures despite becoming increasingly interconnected.

Technology competition has become systemic. Technology governance must do the same.

Managing Competition, Not Technology

The phrase Technology Stability deserves clarification.

The Board is not intended to stabilize technological progress. Innovation should continue to accelerate.

Nor is it intended to stabilize geopolitical competition. Strategic competition between major powers is likely to remain a defining feature of international affairs.

Rather, Technology Stability refers to reducing unnecessary instability generated by fragmented governance.

Its purpose is to make competition more disciplined, more predictable, and better aligned with long-term strategic objectives.

Competition without governance increases strategic risk. Governance without competition weakens innovation.

The Board seeks to reconcile both.

Why a New Institution?

Governments have repeatedly created new institutions when technological change has fundamentally altered the strategic landscape.

The National Security Council integrated military, diplomatic, and intelligence decision-making during the early Cold War.

The Financial Stability Board emerged after the global financial crisis to strengthen coordination across national regulators.

The proposed Board of Technology Stability reflects a similar need.

Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, cloud infrastructure, critical minerals, and supply chains now interact too closely to be governed independently.

Existing institutions remain indispensable.

But none is responsible for integrating the technology ecosystem as a whole.

The Board would fill that gap.

Five Core Functions

The Board should perform five permanent functions.

First, Integrated Strategic Assessment

Every major technology decision should begin with an integrated understanding of its implications across the broader technology ecosystem.

Rather than assessing export controls, AI governance, critical minerals, biotechnology, and supply chains separately, the Board would evaluate their interaction and long-term strategic consequences.

Integrated assessment should become the foundation of technology statecraft.

Second, Adaptive Export Controls

Export controls remain an indispensable national-security instrument.

Their effectiveness, however, depends upon remaining targeted, technologically current, and strategically coherent.

The Board would establish a standing review mechanism to reassess technological thresholds, evaluate commercial consequences, identify second-order effects, and ensure that controls continue protecting genuinely strategic capabilities while minimizing unnecessary costs to U.S. innovation and allied supply chains.

Export controls should evolve as technology evolves.

Third, AI Governance and Biosecurity

Artificial intelligence has become both the most powerful innovation platform and the most significant governance challenge of the coming decade.

The Board would integrate frontier-model evaluation, AI safety, biosecurity, cybersecurity, CBRN safeguards, and scientific risk assessment into one coherent policy framework.

This would close one of today’s largest institutional gaps: the separation between technical AI expertise and national-security decision-making.

Rather than treating AI governance as a parallel policy discussion, it should become a central pillar of technology strategy.

Fourth, Supply-Chain Stability

Technology competition increasingly operates through global production networks rather than individual firms.

Critical minerals, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, advanced manufacturing, cloud infrastructure, and logistics have become sources of both resilience and strategic leverage.

The Board would coordinate policies affecting these interdependent systems while reducing unnecessary uncertainty for governments, businesses, and allied partners.

Supply-chain resilience should become a strategic objective rather than a crisis response.

Fifth, Strategic Dialogue

Finally, the Board should establish a permanent technology dialogue between the United States and China.

Strategic competition requires communication as much as deterrence.

Technical experts should have regular channels to discuss emerging technologies, AI safety, biosecurity, supply-chain resilience, and reciprocal concerns before they escalate into political crises.

Dialogue should not be understood as an alternative to competition.

It is one of the mechanisms through which competition can be governed responsibly.

A September Deliverable

The anticipated meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi offers an opportunity to move beyond tactical negotiations toward institutional innovation.

Recent discussions have focused appropriately on tariffs, trade, export controls, investment, and critical minerals.

These issues remain important. But they are increasingly symptoms of a larger structural transformation.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping every dimension of technology competition. Biosecurity has become inseparable from AI governance. Critical minerals have become strategic assets. Supply chains have become instruments of national power.

These developments require institutions capable of governing competition across the technology ecosystem rather than negotiating each issue separately.

A Board of Technology Stability would provide precisely such a framework.

It would complement the proposed Boards of Trade and Investment by focusing specifically on the technologies that increasingly determine economic security, national security, scientific leadership, and strategic stability.

More importantly, it would demonstrate that both governments recognize a fundamental reality:

Technology competition is likely to endure.

Strategic instability does not have to.

IV. Immediate Priorities

The Board of Technology Stability should focus initially on a limited set of priorities where technological change has outpaced existing policy and where coordinated action would strengthen national security, preserve innovation, and reduce strategic instability. Early success will depend less on creating new regulations than on improving coordination across existing institutions.

Priority One: Modernize Export Controls for the AI Era

Export controls remain one of the United States’ most important national-security tools. The October 2022 semiconductor controls demonstrated Washington’s ability to protect the most advanced capabilities while coordinating closely with key allies. Those objectives remain valid.

Technology, however, has evolved rapidly. Chinese manufacturers now operate beyond several of the original memory and logic thresholds, while subsequent adjustments—including licensing decisions for H200-class GPUs, new controls on high-bandwidth memory, and repeated “is informed” letters—illustrate the increasing difficulty of governing frontier technologies through static regulatory frameworks.

The objective should therefore be continuous adaptation rather than periodic revision.

The Board should establish a permanent technical review mechanism that regularly evaluates technological thresholds, commercial consequences, allied coordination, and Chinese responses. Export controls should remain targeted, technologically current, and strategically coherent. Their effectiveness should be measured not only by restricting access to frontier capabilities, but also by preserving U.S. innovation capacity, sustaining allied technological leadership, and minimizing unintended incentives for accelerated localization.

Priority Two: Stabilize Strategic Supply Chains

Supply-chain resilience has become a central dimension of technology competition.

Recent Chinese export controls on rare earths and permanent magnets demonstrate that strategic leverage increasingly extends beyond semiconductors. At the same time, the experience of the past several years has shown that not all technological chokepoints are alike.

Rare earth processing, specialized equipment, and magnet production remain highly concentrated and difficult to replicate. Semiconductor innovation, by contrast, is characterized by globally distributed ecosystems, multiple technology pathways, and strong incentives for substitution. Policy should distinguish between these fundamentally different forms of technological dependence.

The Board should therefore pursue a framework of strategic supply-chain stability.

Possible measures include reciprocal civilian end-use assurances, trusted-company licensing arrangements, multi-year licensing horizons, and structured dialogue regarding critical-mineral supply chains. Such measures would preserve legitimate national-security protections while reducing unnecessary uncertainty for governments, companies, and global markets.

The objective is not to eliminate leverage. It is to reduce unnecessary volatility in sectors critical to both strategic competition and global economic stability.

Priority Three: Place AI Governance and Biosecurity at the Center of Technology Strategy

Artificial intelligence should no longer be treated as a specialized technology issue. It has become the enabling platform for virtually every frontier technology.

Accordingly, AI governance and biosecurity should become central responsibilities of the Board rather than parallel policy discussions.

The Board should establish an integrated framework linking frontier-model evaluation, AI safety, cybersecurity, biosecurity, CBRN safeguards, and scientific risk assessment. Technical expertise from institutions such as CAISI/NIST, DOE, HHS, NIH, CDC, ASPR, BARDA, the national laboratories, and other relevant agencies should be coordinated within a single strategic process capable of informing national-level decision-making.

Internationally, the Board should support sustained technical engagement with relevant counterparts in China, including ministries, standards organizations, AI safety institutions, and public-health authorities. Such engagement would not reduce strategic competition. Rather, it would strengthen confidence-building measures in areas where mutual interests exist, particularly concerning frontier AI safety, biosecurity, and catastrophic-risk prevention.

In the age of AI, governance of biological risk should become a core function of technology strategy rather than an afterthought.

Priority Four: Institutionalize Technology Dialogue

Strategic competition increasingly unfolds through technology policy.

Yet bilateral engagement remains largely reactive, organized around successive disputes over export controls, tariffs, investment restrictions, or critical minerals.

The Board should establish a permanent channel for technology dialogue that complements existing diplomatic and economic mechanisms.

This dialogue would enable both governments to communicate policy intentions, discuss emerging technologies before they become crises, coordinate technical assessments where appropriate, and develop reciprocal guardrails in areas of shared interest.

Dialogue should not be viewed as a concession. Nor should it be confused with cooperation.

It is a mechanism for governing competition responsibly.

As strategic competition intensifies, communication becomes more—not less—important.

Priority Five: Build Institutional Capacity for Continuous Adaptation

Perhaps the Board’s most important function is also the least visible.

Technology evolves far more rapidly than government institutions. Policy reviews conducted every several years are increasingly insufficient for technologies whose capabilities can change within months.

The Board should therefore institutionalize continuous learning.

Standing technical working groups, regular strategic assessments, horizon-scanning exercises, engagement with industry and academia, and structured collaboration with allies should become permanent features of technology governance rather than ad hoc responses to individual crises.

The objective is to create an institution capable not merely of responding to technological change, but of adapting alongside it.

In an era of accelerating innovation, institutional agility is itself a strategic advantage.

V. Institutional Design

A Board of Technology Stability should be designed around one principle:

Integrate expertise without centralizing bureaucracy.

The proposal is not intended to create another large department or replace existing agencies. Rather, it seeks to provide the institutional capacity that existing structures currently lack: the ability to integrate political authority, technical expertise, and strategic decision-making across interconnected technologies.

Accordingly, the Board should distinguish clearly between political leadership and technical leadership.

Political Leadership

Political leadership should remain at the Cabinet level.

Its role is to establish strategic priorities, resolve interagency disagreements, oversee implementation, and ensure that technology policy remains aligned with broader national-security and economic objectives.

Given Treasury’s expanding role in economic security and international negotiations, the Secretary of the Treasury would be well positioned to provide overall political leadership while working closely with the White House, Commerce, State, Defense, and other relevant departments.

On the Chinese side, an equivalent political lead would require sufficient authority to coordinate across industrial policy, economic policy, AI governance, and national security. The key point is institutional: successful governance requires a political leader capable of integrating across bureaucratic boundaries.

Technical Leadership

Political leadership alone is insufficient.

The Board should also be led by a senior technical figure with deep expertise across AI, semiconductors, biotechnology, critical minerals, industrial policy, and global technology ecosystems.

Unlike traditional advisory structures, this role should be permanent, independent of individual departments, and capable of translating technical analysis into strategic policy recommendations.

The central purpose is to close the longstanding gap between expertise and authority.

Functional Organization

Rather than organizing the Board around agencies, it should be organized around five enduring functions:

• Technology Strategy and Integrated Assessment

• Export Controls and Industrial Competitiveness

• AI Governance, Frontier Models, and Biosecurity

• Critical Minerals and Supply-Chain Resilience

• Strategic Dialogue and International Coordination

This functional structure would encourage integrated decision-making while preserving the responsibilities of existing departments.

U.S.–China Institutional Mapping

The Board should also maintain a standing institutional map identifying the principal counterparts on both sides.

On the U.S. side, this includes Commerce, Treasury, State, Defense, Energy, HHS, NIST, the Intelligence Community, and the White House.

On the Chinese side, it includes MOFCOM, NDRC, MIIT, CAC, MOST, the National Health Commission, and the relevant Party leadership, together with technical institutions responsible for AI safety, standards, biosecurity, and industrial policy.

Detailed personnel assignments should remain flexible and evolve alongside technological developments. The Board’s strength lies not in organizational charts, but in its ability to convene the right expertise at the right time.

VI. Conclusion

Governing Competition in the Age of AI

Competition between the United States and China is likely to remain a defining feature of the international system for the foreseeable future. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and cloud infrastructure have become central to economic competitiveness, national security, and geopolitical influence. As these technologies converge, technology competition itself is becoming increasingly systemic.

The institutions governing that competition, however, have not evolved at the same pace.

For much of the past two decades, technology policy could be managed through relatively discrete instruments—export controls, industrial policy, investment review, scientific cooperation, and trade negotiations. Today, these instruments increasingly overlap. Decisions affecting semiconductors influence AI capability. AI accelerates biotechnology. Critical minerals shape industrial resilience. Supply chains have become instruments of both economic efficiency and strategic leverage.

Technology competition has become an integrated governance challenge.

This paper has argued that three governance gaps now limit effective policymaking.

The first is an integration gap between increasingly interconnected technologies and institutions that continue to govern them separately.

The second is a capability gap between the challenges created by frontier AI and biosecurity and the institutional tools available to manage them.

The third is a coordination gap between political authority and technical expertise, both within governments and across international partners.

These gaps are unlikely to narrow on their own.

They require institutional innovation.

The proposed Board of Technology Stability is intended as that innovation.

Its purpose is neither to reduce strategic competition nor to slow technological progress. Rather, it seeks to strengthen national security while preserving innovation, improving policy coherence, reducing unintended supply-chain disruption, and lowering the risk of unnecessary escalation.

Technology stability should therefore not be understood as technological stagnation.

It should be understood as strategic stability in an era of accelerating technological change.

The Board would complement—not replace—existing institutions by integrating export controls, AI governance, biosecurity, industrial policy, critical minerals, and supply-chain resilience within a common strategic framework. It would connect political leadership with technical expertise, allowing governments to respond to technological change with greater agility, coherence, and foresight.

The anticipated meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi provides an opportunity to begin building such an architecture.

Much attention has rightly focused on tariffs, export controls, investment, and critical minerals. These issues will remain important. Yet they increasingly represent manifestations of a broader transformation rather than isolated policy disputes.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping every dimension of technology competition.

Biotechnology is becoming increasingly inseparable from AI.

Critical minerals have become strategic assets.

Supply chains have become instruments of national power.

Future competition will increasingly be defined by the interaction among these technologies rather than by any single sector.

The challenge facing policymakers is therefore no longer simply how to compete.

It is how to govern competition.

History suggests that major technological revolutions have consistently required new institutions. Nuclear technology led to new arms-control mechanisms. Globalization produced new trade and financial institutions. The AI era will likewise require governance mechanisms capable of integrating scientific innovation, national security, economic policy, and international stability.

Competition without governance increases strategic risk.

Governance without competition weakens innovation.

The challenge of statecraft in the age of AI is to build institutions capable of governing competition wisely.

A Board of Technology Stability represents one practical step toward that objective.

PLA Navy Conducts Unprecedented Submarine-launched Missile Test into Pacific

On Monday, July 6, the PLA Navy (PLAN) carried out a rare submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test with a dummy warhead from a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN). The missile was reportedly launched from a location south of Guangdong and flew thousands of miles across the Pacific, landing in the South Pacific near Tonga. China described the test as a “routine” military exercise.

The test is significant because it is the first publicly acknowledged SLBM test with a dummy warhead from the PLAN SSBN that traveled so far into the Pacific (approximately 7,200 kilometers). Previous SLBM tests landed in the Bohai and were not publicly announced.

The test prompted swift condemnation from the U.S., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan, who accused Beijing of “destabilizing” the region.

It appears the missile tested was the JL-2 (巨浪-2), not the JL-3 (巨浪-3). The JL-2 has a maximum range of 7,200–8,000 kilometers, while the JL-3 is 10,000-13,000 kilometers. The range of the missile test is consistent with that of the JL-2.

With this test, the PLAN has shown the capability to target the continental United States from bastions close to Chinese waters, in addition to holding U.S. allies and partners in the region at risk. The launch indicates that China now has an operational sea-based nuclear deterrent and is progressing with its nuclear triad.

CCA Analysis: A test of this range is a major development that indicates that China is moving toward a more survivable and longer-range sea-based nuclear deterrent capability. The launch demonstrates that China’s nuclear deterrent is no longer centered solely on land-based missiles.

This will make Xi Jinping very happy. Conducting a launch of this magnitude implies confidence in China’s submarine crews, command and control, and missile reliability in the context of ongoing political pressure with Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and PLA purges.

It is noteworthy that China pre-notified the United States, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea and Taiwan - but reportedly only a few hours in advance and with limited details. The U.S. criticized the short advance notice as “insufficient” and below the notification standards generally maintained by the P5 (meaning the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council). China publicly stated that it had notified “relevant countries” in advance but did not specify which countries or how much warning they received.

This contrasts with China’s September 25, 2024 ICBM test into the Pacific, when Beijing reportedly notified the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan approximately 24 hours in advance.

The rationale for the test is straightforward: in order to boast a true nuclear triad, China has to be able to demonstrate its missiles work as designed, including reaching the expected range and landing in the pre-determined target zone. In this case, it appears China and the PLAN achieved these objectives.

I wouldn’t read too much into the timing. A launch of this type was likely planned months, maybe years, in advance, and is subject to delays based on weather. Even if China intended to time the launch with a historical event, much depends on submarine crew readiness and weather, which can change at a moment’s notice.

The test will almost certainly facilitate a desire from regional powers, including U.S. allies and partners, to cooperate more, not less, with the U.S., due to greater fear and concern over China’s nuclear modernization trajectory. That is the downside of the launch from Beijing’s perspective. It will bring U.S. allies closer together and fuel concern over China’s military ambitions.

The U.S. State Department’s condemnation of the launch won’t change Beijing’s calculus on arms control or nuclear risk reduction with the United States, or Washington’s efforts to compel Beijing to agree to trilateral arms control treaties with Moscow and Washington. China believes it is still at a strategic disadvantage with the U.S. when it comes to nuclear capabilities, and in that context, will not be persuaded in the short term to agree to any sort of arms control with the U.S.

China and Russia Kick Off Joint Naval Exercises in Qingdao

On July 6, the Chinese and Russian navies launched “Joint Sea-2026” (海上联合-2026), an annual bilateral naval exercise, in Qingdao, China. The exercise is noteworthy because it involves surface combatants, submarines, rescue vessels, and joint air-defense and anti-missile training, and will be followed by a joint China-Russia maritime patrol in the Pacific Ocean.

This year’s exercise consists of an initial harbor phase, followed by at-sea operations beginning July 9. According to Chinese official reporting, the sea phase is taking place in waters and airspace near Qingdao and includes four publicly identified major training areas: joint reconnaissance, air and missile defense, attacks against maritime targets, and joint submarine rescue operations.

The harbor phase includes command and tactical-coordination activities, professional exchanges on submarine rescue technology and equipment, reciprocal ship visits, and other exchanges. Chinese personnel toured Russian ships, while Russian sailors visited the Chinese destroyer Kaifeng.

Russia has deployed a substantial contingent from its Pacific Fleet, including the Slava-class guided-missile cruiser Varyag, a corvette, a diesel-electric submarine, and the submarine-rescue vessel Igor Belousov. The participation of a Russian submarine and specialized rescue vessel is especially relevant given that joint submarine rescue is one of the exercise’s principal training areas.

On the Chinese side, the publicly identified combatants include the PLAN’s Type 052D guided-missile destroyer Kaifeng; the Type 055 guided-missile destroyer Anshan, the Type 054A guided-missile frigate Wuhu; the Type 903A comprehensive replenishment ship Kekexilihu; the Type 926 submarine support ship Yangchenghu, and one submarine that was not identified.

The publicly announced training program is significant because it goes beyond simple formation sailing or basic communications drills. The principal activities are:

• Joint reconnaissance, which includes sharing information and coordinating detection and tracking of simulated threat actors;

• Air and missile defense, which is arguably one of the most strategically significant components, requiring integration of sensors, command systems, and defensive weapons across both navies;

• Maritime strike operations, which include coordinated attacks against surface targets; and

• Joint submarine rescue, which is an area of growing China-Russia technical cooperation and a potentially important indicator of deeper submarine-force interoperability.

During the harbor phase, Chinese and Russian experts specifically discussed submarine rescue technology, equipment development, and maritime training, suggesting that this element is more than a ceremonial addition to the exercise.

Following Joint Sea-2026, some participating Chinese and Russian forces will reportedly proceed into the Pacific Ocean for a joint maritime patrol. The exact patrol route has not yet been publicly specified in the sources available, but previous China-Russia joint patrols have taken their ships through strategically sensitive areas of the western Pacific, including waters near Japan, which at times have unnerved the Japanese military.

This follow-on patrol is as strategically consequential as the exercise itself. A scripted exercise demonstrates interoperability under controlled conditions. But an operational patrol requires the two navies to coordinate over greater distances and periods of time in real-world maritime environments. On July 11, the Global Times posted a video on X of Chinese and Russian submarines conducting at-sea patrols, suggesting a new level of joint undersea warfare training in a live setting.

CCA Analysis: There are four key takeaways from this year’s “Joint Sea-2026” exercise.

First, the exercise demonstrates the continuing institutionalization of China-Russia military cooperation. The two countries have become each other’s most important foreign military exercise partners, and their exercises have progressively expanded in frequency, geographical reach, complexity, and service participation since the mid-2000s.

Second, the air and missile defense component has increased in emphasis. Effective integration of air and missile defense requires coordination in detection, tracking, information sharing, and command and control. The critical analytical question is how much tactical data the two navies actually exchange during the drill. Public information does not suggest that their combat systems are fully integrated. But the scale and scope of bilateral naval exercises is clearly intended to improve their ability to operate alongside one another, and one assumes integration has improved.

Third, Qingdao is home to major elements of China’s Northern Theater Command Navy and is an important PLAN submarine base. Conducting the exercise there and explicitly emphasizing submarine rescue gives Russia access to a strategically important Chinese naval environment that provides both navies an opportunity to deepen cooperation in an area that has traditionally involved particularly sensitive military technologies.

Fourth, the exercise occurs amid a wider surge in Chinese military activity around Taiwan. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau reported an upward trend in Chinese naval movements and said that four Chinese naval formations were operating in the western Pacific as of last week. Taiwanese officials have interpreted expanding China-Russia activity as part of a broader effort to counter the U.S.-led military posture along the First Island Chain.

Thus, the most important aspect of “Joint Sea-2026” is not so much the number of ships involved, but the increasing sophistication and routinization of China-Russia naval cooperation at the tactical level. The inclusion of submarine rescue operations, air and missile defense, maritime strike, reconnaissance, and subsequent operational patrols represents a substantially more meaningful form of cooperation than ceremonial port visits.

At the same time, I would not characterize China and Russia as a fully integrated military alliance. There is still limited public evidence of the kind of deeply integrated command-and-control architecture or joint operational planning associated with the United States and its allies, for example. A better characterization is that China and Russia are developing an increasingly capable, institutionalized, and strategically coordinated military partnership that gives both countries greater capacity to complicate U.S. and allied planning across multiple theaters.

Xi Promotes Two Generals, Including One to CMC; Purges Others

On July 3, Chinese President Xi Jinping promoted two PLA officers to the rank of General, and named a new head of the Central Military Commission (CMC)’s anti-corruption body.

Zhang Shuguang (张曙光), was promoted from the rank of lieutenant general to full general, was named as the new head of the CMC’s Discipline Inspection Commission – the top military anti-corruption body – and director of the CMC’s supervision committee, replacing Zhang Shengmin. Zhang Shuguang spent most of his career as a political officer in the Air Force and Army until working in the DIC under Zhang Shengmin. His elevation to replace Zhang Shengmin is therefore not a surprise, given the patronage relationship that existed prior to his promotion.

Wang Gang (王刚) was also promoted to the rank of full general and takes over as Commander of the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). Wang began his career as a pilot before leading an Air Force division. Wang later served as the director of the Air Force training department (2012–2016), assistant Air Force chief of staff (2016–2019), central theater command Air Force chief of staff (2019–2022), Air Force chief of staff (2022–2025), and deputy Air Force commander (2025–2026).

The announcement comes amid an ongoing anti-corruption campaign that has led to the downfall of many of the most senior figures in the PLA.

PLA analyst Zi Yang covers the backgrounds and significance of these two generals in detail in this piece in The Diplomat.

In other recent developments, on June 26, the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee announced the removal of six PLA general officers.

• Xu Xueqiang (许学强) (PLAAF), head of the Equipment Development Department and director of the Manned Space Program of PRC;

• Wang Kangping (王抗平) (PLAAF), deputy commander of the PLA Eastern Theater Command;

• Li Fengbiao (李凤彪) (PLAA), political commissar of the Western Theater Command;

• Yin Hongxing (尹红星), (PLAA), political commissar of the Southern Theater Command Army;

• Guo Puxiao (郭普校), (PLAAF), political commissar of the PLA Air Force; and

• Zhang Minghua (张明华), (PLAA), commander of the PLA Cyberspace Force.

What is most noteworthy about these purges is they appear to target the Political Work department of the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) more than in the past. Three are Air Force officers, with three from the PLA Army (PLAA). Up until this point, the PLAAF had largely escaped the full brunt of Xi’s corruption effort, which had disproportionately targeted the PLA Army, Navy, Rocket force, and equipment forces. The Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief has a helpful write-up of these recent purges and their significance.

CCA Analysis: It is safe to say this latest round of purges is focused primarily on dismantling the residual patronage network around the former CMC vice chair Zhang Youxia (张又侠), who became one of Xi’s highest-profile purges of senior PLA officers when he was removed from office on January 24, 2026.

It was also noteworthy that Defense Minister Dong Jun and General Han Shengyan, commander of the Central Theatre Command, were pictured on July 1 seated next to each other at a gala marking the 105th anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding. It was the first time they had been pictured alongside other senior PLA commanders.

This could be an indication that both Dong and Han may be on track to become CMC members as well.

Given the two new promotions to General, if I were to guess, the new CMC leadership in 2027 could include Zhang, Wang, Dong, Han, and Yang Zhibin, who was appointed commander of the Eastern Theatre Command in December. But we will have to wait and see.

Written by Kate Logan, Director of the China Climate Hub

In May, China’s power sector capacity breached 4000 gigawatts (GW) – exceeding the total magnitude of the U.S., EU, Indian, Russian and Japanese power sectors combined. The paradox of this scale, of course, is that China leads the world in clean power installations and is approaching a power sector based primarily on non-fossil sources while still burning the most coal of any country, accounting for over half of the global total.

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Beijing recently released its 15th five-year plan for building a new-type energy system, which introduced little by way of flashy new targets for clean energy or emissions control. But asking why officials avoided any surprises, along with a deeper read of the plan, can reveal useful insights about how domestic policymakers are approaching China’s energy transformation. In particular, three points deserve attention from those aiming to understand how Beijing intends to thread the needle between the triple imperatives of economic growth, energy security, and decarbonization.

First, the plan centers the next phase of China’s efforts to safeguard its energy security as it emerges from the Hormuz energy crisis relatively unscathed.

Recent weeks have seen a flurry of media coverage declaring China to be the “winner” from the Strait of Hormuz energy crisis. While some analysts were surprised by China’s relative ability to weather deep shocks to global energy markets, Beijing emerged from the crisis with greater confidence, reaffirming its conviction to double down on energy independence and self-sufficiency. The new plan places energy security at the center while outlining how officials plan to reduce China’s remaining import dependencies. This focus is evident from the opening paragraphs, which foreground compounding security risks while framing energy security and supply adequacy as the prerequisite for economic viability, technological innovation, and decarbonization.

The document outlines a variety of steps for further substituting imported fuels with domestic alternatives, while pledging that “energy imports will be diversified and controllable.” Major components of this strategy include expanding the development of coal-based synthetic fuels; expanding and commercializing green fuels, including by increasing green hydrogen output eightfold by 2030; and deepening electrification of heavy-duty trucking and marine shipping. In the power sector, natural gas, which already plays a minimal role in electricity generation, is to be constructed “rationally” while scaling up domestically produced gas turbines. China will also aim for 35 percent electrification by 2030, five years ahead of a newly proposed global target.

For China’s emissions, the implications of this strategy are likely mixed. On one hand, further minimizing oil and gas use and accelerating electrification will deepen reductions. However, even with the emphasis on green fuels, renewed political support for coal-to-chemicals investments risks unleashing a massive new emissions “bomb” – and one that may become increasingly difficult to track via official statistics.

Second, the plan’s emphasis on enhancing grid flexibility signals Beijing’s concern over high levels of “wasted” renewables, which are a bottleneck for both economic growth and decarbonization.

With newly installed wind and solar capacity growing at record rates in recent years, China’s relatively inflexible grid has struggled to integrate this sudden influx of intermittent power. Just last year, China added 434 gigawatts of wind and solar, a figure nearly one and a half times the size of Japan’s entire power sector. Official data now place renewable energy curtailment at just under the government’s recently-established limit of 10 percent, which was doubled from 5 percent last year. Analysts, however, believe that the actual curtailment figure is substantially higher than official figures suggest. High curtailment is impeding clean power from keeping up with

China’s rapidly growing power demand, which increased by around 5 percent last year, forcing greater coal consumption than it would be otherwise.

The solution – making China’s power sector more flexible – is at the core of the new plan. It includes a new target for the grid’s “regulating capacity” to rise by over 40 percent, which serves as a proxy for the grid’s adaptability. Details about how this will look in practice are vague, however, and the language seems to indicate Beijing’s intention to continue “bundling” coal alongside cleaner sources of generation. But several additional targets for 2030 provide a strong growth incentive for cleaner means of balancing load variation: raising “new energy storage,” which includes batteries, to 300 GW; increasing pumped-storage hydropower to 160 GW; and expanding vehicle-to-grid capacity and virtual power plant capacity to 50 GW each. Some of these targets fall short of industry association benchmarks, but they are more ambitious than the objectives around clean energy installations – reflecting Beijing’s focus on making the existing system work better before adding even more new energy.

Third, the plan reaffirms Beijing’s shift away from control-based targets and toward an “additive” approach that leverages China’s clean technology dominance as the main driver of decarbonization.

For those hoping for firmer signals on how China will limit fossil fuels and cap its emissions, the new plan will disappoint. Although the overall 15th Five-Year Plan pledges to peak oil and coal consumption – and another recent initiative integrates oil and coal use totals into local cadres’ evaluations – the new energy plan provides no additional details about the timing and level of such peaks. This is despite earlier indications in state media that oil consumption will likely peak around 2026 and coal consumption around 2027. On renewables, the plan mostly consolidates existing targets, including 2030 goals for non-fossil energy to account for 25 percent of total energy consumption and for “new energy generation” – i.e., wind and solar – to reach 30 percent of total power generation. An additional, new target for all non-fossil sources to comprise over half of power generation would still leave room for overall emissions to rise.

From Beijing’s perspective, these conservative renewables targets and the absence of hard caps on fossil fuels allow China the flexibility to grow its economy and weather potential geopolitical shocks while remaining on track to peak its emissions before 2030, as Xi pledged in 2020. They also underscore that Beijing’s level of ambition is likely to be driven less by climate commitments than by economic incentives from its leading clean technology industries, as my colleagues Neil Thomas and Guoguang Wu argued in a recent CCA report. Innovation will be an important part of China’s recipe: the plan puts forth new targets for international patent applications to rise by 5 percent and for over 100 “first-of-its-kind” demonstration projects to be launched by 2030. The plan also elevates a May 2025 policy calling for computing power demand to be met with green sources, marking the first time that “computing power” was referenced in a national energy plan.

Observers may debate whether Beijing’s new energy strategy meets the moment, especially whether it balances economic and security interests with the realities of climate change: in 2025, China suffered over $35 billion in economic losses from natural disasters, and Xi recently chaired a Politburo study session on emergency management in the wake of disastrous flooding in China’s Southern regions this year. Even without ambitious targets, however, Beijing would argue that it has already demonstrated the essential role of electrification for bolstering energy security in a volatile world. With an electrification rate significantly higher than those of the United States or Europe, China may also be better positioned to transform a wide range of industrial sectors while reducing both energy costs and carbon emissions.