(CNN) The lavish fanfare President Donald Trump is laying on for China’s leader Xi Jinping implies that a grand global moment is at hand.
In an unusual move, Trump traveled to a blustery Joint Base Andrews to greet Xi at the foot of the steps to his plane when he arrived Wednesday for a two-night stay. The leaders chatted, together with their wives, before strolling down a red carpet side by side. There was one blip in the choreography, however, when a jet performing a flyover split the sky with a thunderous roar during the national anthem, causing Trump to flinch and grimace.
Still, the imagery suggests two great leaders of the world’s most powerful nations meeting to chart the planet’s destiny. The timing could not be more propitious as the US and China push across a new technological frontier amid warnings from industry chiefs that artificial intelligence may soon race out of control.
But pageantry can deceive. Xi’s state visit is no equivalent of the summits between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that set the Cold War on course for a soft landing.
For one thing, it is expected to end without an agreement to protect humanity that would parallel 1980s nuclear weapons cuts. Forty years on, such moves might include curbs on AI development or the US and China offering mutual visibility into their tech industries to build trust and safety.
There is still a chance the summit could surprise — though to do so it would have to confound China’s traditional diplomatic codes, which require intricate pre-meeting diplomacy to line up deliverables. In reality, then, a good outcome would be limited to an extension of the bilateral trade truce announced Wednesday evening; new efforts to forge stability between Washington and Beijing; and minor initiatives on AI, fentanyl flows, trade and avoiding military clashes.
But why are expectations so low, especially when the rest of the world is looking on as the US and China vie for the lead in an artificial intelligence arms race?
The AI issue is especially emblematic of the gulf between the rivals. Each thinks it can prevail, and both understand the stakes for their superpower duel: “Whoever wins AI, wins,” as Trump put it. Both are resisting any meaningful constraints in a sector that is vital to propping up economic growth. Many analysts believe China is trailing in the AI race, and wouldn’t sign up to any mutual slowing of the industry. It typically sees any move to limit its technological rise as part of a Western strategy to deprive it of its rightful global power.
A personality mismatch between the improvisational Trump and the deliberate Xi also augurs against spontaneous decision-making. The US and Chinese political systems are so different — and so increasingly weighted to counter the other — that little common ground exists.
And each side wants to avoid blowups but lacks the leverage to force concessions.
Trump’s plunging poll numbers amid the Iran war risk fraying his global clout. He discovered last year that Chinese threats to cut exports of rare earth minerals to the US could thwart his trade offensive. And while Xi has no worries about angry voters in his totalitarian homeland, and ruthlessly protects his domestic power, he is facing a property crisis and economic issues back home.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/24/politics/trump-xi-meeting-china-ai
