What the Xi–Trump Summit Failed to Address

Commentary

May’s summit between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump effectively ended with an agreement to prolong the standoff arrangements settled late last year. Each got promises from the other that they could bring home, but essentially, they left with last year’s arrangements intact.

Both men seemed intent on avoiding difficult matters that need attention, most noticeably matters of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), export controls, and privacy. Hope persists that these important matters will get greater attention this coming September when Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet in Washington, but it is more hope than anything else.

Trump, on his way home, told the press on Air Force One that these subjects had come up, but the lack of any announcement suggests that he and Xi said little of substance and certainly reached no agreements.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was more pointed. After the summit, he told media outlets that AI, cybersecurity, export controls, and privacy were mooted, but in no way was agreement likely to emerge.

Because Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang had joined Trump’s entourage at the last minute, hope rose that at least export controls, especially his company’s H200 chip, would have a significant place on the agenda, but from both Trump’s and Greer’s comments, it seems not.

Of the overlooked areas, cybersecurity is the most urgent. Cyberattacks between the United States and China have long been a source of sometimes extreme tension. Most American complaints have received public notice.

Last December, for instance, Washington stopped just short of sanctioning China over what has been called the Salt Typhoon intrusions. These seem to have exposed almost every American’s phone data to Beijing-linked actors.

Washington has also indicated that China has successfully infiltrated critical infrastructure in the United States, including energy, water, and communications, including what is called Volt Typhoon’s surveillance of U.S. telecommunications.

Recently, Anthropic revealed that China has engaged in AI-enabled cyber espionage against a number of American institutions, while Washington has indicated that China has surveilled U.S. military activity.

Along with such public complaints from long before the summit, Trump’s admission during the meetings that this country has done much the same to China could have formed the basis for substantive discussions and perhaps a productive give-and-take, but none emerged. Nor, it seems, was much said about related privacy issues.

The administration has paid less attention to privacy matters than Congress. There and among citizen groups, efforts at bipartisan restraints on China’s abilities are evident. The main concern is with software embedded in Chinese-made products that tracks all sorts of information about U.S. citizens and residents.

Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich) and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) have advanced the Connected Vehicle Security Act to guard against Russian and Chinese software embedded mostly in automobiles and auto parts that could track the movements of Americans.

Congress has also shown its concern with the Protecting Military Bases from Connected Vehicles of Concern Act, which does much the same but focuses on military matters. But as indicated, Trump and Xi did little or nothing substantive on the matter.

Those disappointed on all these fronts—whether export controls, privacy, cybersecurity, or AI safety—now pin their hopes on September’s Trump–Xi summit in Washington. The sense is that the May summit suffered from the typical drawback of leader-led summits, with their primary focus on optics rather than substance. Especially because cybersecurity and these matters do not yield easily to quick fixes, it seems unlikely that the September summit will produce more substance than the one just passed, not the least because it will occur close to the mid-term elections.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.