Xi Jinping visits the United States to meet with Trump: The ambitions of China and the United States as AI superpowers become the focus
Author, Joe Tidy
Role, BBC cyber security reporter
and
Author, Osmond Chia
Role, BBC business reporter
Published 4 minutes ago
Reading time: 4 minutes
"Whoever wins AI wins everything!"
U.S. President Donald Trump has made no secret of his ambitions in artificial intelligence and made it clear who he considers the United States’ biggest competitor: China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping hasn’t said so outright, but he appears to have similar views.
"China very clearly sees this as a competition, and they very much believe that China should be the leading force in artificial intelligence," said Rebecca Arcesati of the Mercator Institute for China Studies. "They see AI as a tool to enhance national power."
To find evidence, look beyond the words of both sides. Whether Xi Jinping emphasizes it publicly or not, artificial intelligence has been one of the core of China's technological ambitions for more than a decade.
For Trump, defeating China in artificial intelligence outweighs any risks the technology may pose to humanity. He once described such risks as "scams."
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that "threat theory" and confrontation would hinder global artificial intelligence governance, and called on all parties to cooperate to ensure that this technology can benefit everyone.
That means that when the two leaders sit down for talks on Thursday, few issues will be more important than their ambitions in artificial intelligence, and what they say and decide will have global ramifications.
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Is the United States taking the lead?
There is no doubt that both the United States and China are global leaders in artificial intelligence, but who is ahead depends on how success is measured.
U.S. companies currently lead in so-called cutting-edge models, with the best-performing systems by most metrics coming from companies such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.
In February 2025, an AI model from China’s DeepSeek “briefly tied the top model in the United States.” Researchers at Stanford University said that as of March 2026, Anthropic's most advanced model had a lead of "only 2.7%."
Part of the U.S.’s advantage comes from the huge amounts of money investors have poured into leading AI companies. These labs at the forefront of technology are spending huge sums of money building the infrastructure needed to train new models.
The U.S. stock market is booming, and a large part of U.S. economic growth relies on the huge expansion of artificial intelligence companies and the market's expectations for the future profitability of these companies.
This may partly explain why President Trump sees artificial intelligence as key to America’s success.
Another factor limiting China's capabilities is the broad U.S. government restrictions on companies that prohibit them from selling to Chinese companies advanced chips that are critical to developing the most cutting-edge models.
China's advantages
Despite chip limitations, China and the United States are launching new AI models almost every month. It is still unclear what "winning" the artificial intelligence race actually means, and whether there is even an end point in this race.
Many companies are racing to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI). This is a type of artificial intelligence that is still in the theoretical stage and is capable of learning, reasoning, and completing a wide range of tasks at or above human levels.
The focus of China's artificial intelligence industry so far is not to develop the most cutting-edge cutting-edge models, but to launch the so-called "open weight model." Such models can be downloaded and modified in a manner similar to open source software.
This is different from the approach taken by many American businesses. U.S. companies mostly focus on proprietary models, often available through paid subscriptions or enterprise platforms.
China’s open-weight models are being rolled out at a rapid pace, with reviews showing that the gap between China’s best models and their U.S. counterparts is only a few months.
Models such as Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 are increasingly popular in China and even overseas because their performance is close to the most advanced cutting-edge models, while they are still free to download and modify.
Lizzi Lee, a China analyst at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said Beijing's focus is more on applying the technology broadly throughout the economy.
She said: "AI is not a race to the moon. The United States may be at the forefront of technology, but if China can make AI with comparable capabilities cheap, open, and ubiquitous, China can still achieve huge economic and geopolitical influence."
Artificial intelligence is also very power-hungry. In an interview with the BBC International program "Tech Life", Alcesati said that China is in a very favorable position in this regard.
"Chinese AI companies can get the power they need at a much lower cost, which is really an advantage," she said.
As for robotic technology in the field of artificial intelligence, which some people believe will change the world, China has become the world's largest robot producer. The International Federation of Robotics estimates that there are currently more than 2 million robots operating in Chinese factories.
China is also the world's largest producer of humanoid robots. Chatham House, an independent policy research organization, pointed out that in the first half of this year, China accounted for more than 90% of global humanoid robot shipments.
Lian Jye Su, an analyst at technology research firm Omdia, said Chinese AI developers have shown "extraordinary resilience and innovation" despite a shortage of advanced U.S. chips.
However, U.S. officials and AI companies accuse Chinese developers of narrowing the gap through "distillation" technology. This approach allows models to learn from platforms with more advanced capabilities.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that the development of artificial intelligence in China is driven by the concept of "co-discussion, co-construction, and sharing."
What about security issues?
China and the United States may be competing fiercely, but there are stark differences in how the two governments approach AI security.
Some people in the industry have recently warned that artificial intelligence may pose an existential threat to mankind, but Chinese researchers seem to be less worried about this risk and more concerned about the possible misuse of technology and cyber warfare and other issues.
In response to outside concerns about artificial intelligence, Trump said that the existing rules in the United States are sufficient, and the only guardrail AI needs is a "high IQ" president.
"We are now significantly ahead of China and ahead of all other countries, and we will keep it that way," Trump said this week. He added that the United States would not "stifle the development of something that will exceed the scale of the Industrial Revolution."
Jayant Dave, director of information security at cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies, said Washington is prioritizing innovation and trying to reduce regulations to "keep American labs ahead."
Compared with the less interventionist approach of the United States, Beijing has adopted a different strategy.
Xi Jinping has urged China's leadership to pay close attention to the risks of artificial intelligence and ensure that the technology "is always under human control."
"China has adopted a relatively prudent, centrally coordinated approach," Dave said. China has already introduced guidelines on data use and algorithms before many other countries, helping to address many fundamental concerns.
Will they cooperate?
Trump has dismissed suggestions that the industry as a whole slow down development, arguing that doing so could allow Chinese developers to catch up.
Leia Wang, a policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that Trump's remarks on China have been "more confrontational" in recent weeks, but that artificial intelligence is expected to be included in the summit agenda, which itself is a "good start."
He added that people do not want this "unhealthy competition discourse" to continue to ferment and further heat up the already fierce competition in artificial intelligence.
