(Preview) Xi Jinping Comes to Washington; US-China Agenda, Questions and Expectations; The September Politburo Meeting

Andrew Sharp (0:04)

Hello, and welcome to Sharp China. I'm Andrew Sharp, and you are listening to a free preview of today's episode.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Sharp China. I'm Andrew Sharp, and on the other line, Bill Bishop. Bill, how are you doing?

Bill Bishop (0:21)

Doing well, Andrew, although we didn't get our invitation to the events on Thursday.

Andrew Sharp (0:26)

Hasn't come through yet, still have about 24 hours, who knows?

Bill Bishop (0:30)

I don't know if it's just a postal service problem or what happened.

Andrew Sharp (0:35)

Well, maybe we didn't put enough donations on the table to get ourselves a seat for Thursday night at the state dinner. Who can say? But it is Xi Week in Washington, DC.

Lots of rumors flying around, all sorts of speculation, and some good rainy fall weather will be welcoming the general secretary later this week. Although, who knows what Thursday will look like? I know the next day or so.

Bill Bishop (1:02)

I think for his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base on Wednesday, by Wednesday late afternoon, it should clear up.

Andrew Sharp (1:08)

It will have cleared.

Bill Bishop (1:10)

President Trump will be greeting Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base.

Andrew Sharp (1:14)

Indeed. You know, they're rolling out all the stops for President Xi here. We'll see. But as we dive into it and try to wrap our arms around, again, lots of speculation this week, let's begin with 12 hours of bilateral preparation meetings that were held at JP Morgan headquarters in New York City on Sunday.

And what was arguably our first deliverable of Summit Week, Edward Lawrence tweeted, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and USTR Jameson Greer worked out an agreement to have a direct, quote, unquote, hotline with China over artificial intelligence. This hotline, similar to the direct line of communication the military has, will allow either side to have a direct line if any issues arise with AI over hacking, national security concerns, rogue AIs, or other AI concerns. President Trump will give a thumbs up or thumbs down on the deal this week before meeting President Xi. Okay, so there has not technically been a thumbs up from President Trump on this. But how do you read that news, particularly after the past two weeks?

Bill Bishop (2:29)

So that whole meeting, it's interesting. Somehow the JP Morgan headquarters is neutral ground for the meeting.

Kind of interesting. Nice headquarters, clearly.

Andrew Sharp (2:41)

Polatial in there, yes.

Bill Bishop (2:42)

They needed to meet before Xi arrives. I think there's still lots of things to be worked out. From the readouts or the leaking and conversations since the Sunday meeting, then there was a follow-up meeting on Monday, I think with the lower level folks.

Doesn't lead one to think there's a lot of progress on deals on the AI thing. I think that when she visited California, met with President Biden, they then agreed to start some sort of an AI dialogue, which happened, but there was a good op-ed from one of the people involved in the Biden administration, the New York Times over the weekend. Didn't go well. Maybe this time will be different. The history of U.S.-China hotlines in other areas is not good. Yeah. A hotline doesn't work when it just rings and rings and rings, and no one answers for days on end, which is what's happened.

Maybe they can just have an agent answer at this point, right? We don't have to hook up like news or the reconfigured man. Our agents talk to their agents. Seriously, right? Rowan, I mean, hook it up to like 11 labs or something, so you can clone Xi's voice and Trump's voice, or whoever's on there, but then have a conversation.

Andrew Sharp (3:52)

That's how we will finally construct strategic stability. Boy, oh boy, we've solved it right here on the podcast.

Bill Bishop (4:00)

All joking aside, look, it's good that they started to talk about having some sort of conversation around AI. We have no details. We have no idea what the structure will be if it is going to happen.

It really matters who is involved. If it's led on the Chinese side by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it's most likely going to be fairly useless. It needs to have significant... The fact that He Lifeng is the interlocutor, he effectively oversees the NDRC. The NDRC has an AI Tsar or Tsarina named Huang Ru.

Huang or someone on her staff should absolutely have a big role in the AI dialogue, especially someone from the Cyberspace Administration of China, among other agencies. I think one of the issues is this person, I forget his name, Seth, I should get his name up. From the Biden administration wrote in the New York Times out there over the weekend, one of the problems was that the Chinese side, it was led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they just didn't have the right people in the room.