While U.S. President Donald Trump was in Beijing this week to discuss a wide range of issues with Chinese President Xi Jinping including the war in Iran, representatives of one of the largest American business organizations in China were on the other side of the globe in Washington, D.C. for exchanges that included more of a narrow focus: AI security
“A lot of discussions in Washington, D.C. were about AI governance,” American Chamber of Commerce in China President Michael Hart said in a telephone interview from Washington on Friday.
The Beijing-headquartered group, whose membership includes approximately 800 businesses, organized a delegation of dozen representatives who visited 11 congressional offices between May 11-15 on an annual visit known as a “doorknock.” They also met with representatives of the Chinese embassy, the State Department, the Commerce Department, and a half a dozen think-tanks or specialist groups focused on China to promote business ties between the two countries. AmCham China also co-hosted a “China Business Conference” with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that attracted several hundred attendees and about 60 speakers and panelists during a stay in the nation’s capital that was set prior to the announcement of Trump’s China trip, Hart said.
Regarding AI, “one of the concerns is that AI will be one area where the U.S. and China compete, and apparently, AI compute is seen as one of the major elements about competitiveness,” Hart said.
“There’s a view in Washington, D.C., that export controls are important because AI compute depends upon a number of things, but one of them is chips. There’s a view that, from a national security point of view, that the U.S. should restrict chip exports of the highest end of chips to China. It was interesting for us to hear that in a lot of detail among a number of folks,” he said.
Concern About AI And Terrorism
In addition, “there’s a hope among people in Washington, D.C. that the U.S. and China could agree on some AI governance frameworks, particularly around restricting individual actors,” Hart said. “There’s a concern that an individual non-state actor could use AI as a form of terrorism, and so there’s some hope that the U.S. and China could come to some agreements about how to restrict and limit that from happening, even if we can’t agree ourselves on other AI cooperation.” Jensen Huang, CEO of semiconductor supplier Nvidia, was among the more than a dozen U.S. business leaders accompanying Trump on his visit to Beijing.
Other discussion topics raised during the AmCham China doorknock beyond AI included the emergence of China, home of the world’s second-largest economy, as a competitor to the U.S. in a growing number of areas, including those related to national security, Hart noted. “And there are always national security concerns in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “We were having good discussions to understand the concerns.”
“A Good Meeting”
As for Trump’s trip, AmCham China’s president said: “For us, the most important thing about the Trump visit was just a good meeting between Trump and Xi to bring American businesses back to sort of par because everybody else had visited this year. Leaders from Germany, Spain, the UK, Canada and elsewhere have recently visited, so there were some questions within China among government officials — like mid-government officials– about how to treat the Americans, because of course there was a lot of negative press around Iran and so it was starting to cause some delays in some of our meetings.”
“The fact that President Trump and President Xi had a nice meeting brings things back to normalization for companies on the ground,” he said. “We were hoping, of course, for some trade deals, but for us, that would be icing on the cake. We were just hoping for a good visit to reset relations, and that was achieved.”
Trump’s visit followed a trip to China earlier this month by U.S. Senators Steve Daines, Maria Cantwell and Deb Fischer before Trump’s visit. “It sounded like they had some good discussions,” Hart said. The Chamber has been worried that up-to-date knowledge of concerns among its members among Washington leaders and organizations was sliding due to fewer post-Covid visits to the country, “so it’s good that those senators were able to come. We’re hoping for more visits,” he added.
Hart has led AmCham China as president for four years; his approximately three-decade career in Greater China previously included a senior role at Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate services company.
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