U.S. and China should stay clear-eyed on AI cooperation and competition, says Scott Bessent

U.S. Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent gestures whle speaking at the U.S.-China Relations Gala Dinner in New York on November 10, 2026 | Photo Credit: AP The United States and ‌China should harbor no illusions about their differences on artificial intelligence as they navigate cooperation to ​mitigate the technology’s risks while competing for Artificial Intelligence (AI) supremacy, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said ⁠on Tuesday (November 10, 2026).Mr. Bessent, who will travel to China next week for U.S. President Donald Trump’s third meeting this year with Chinese President Xi Jinping, said in prepared remarks to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations in New York that he wanted to “build ‌a constructive relationship on the basis of balance and reciprocity.”The meeting in Shenzhen, to be held on the sidelines of the November 18-19 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders summit, will advance a new bilateral ‌dialogue on “superintelligence”, or SI, Bessent said, using the Trump administration’s preferred term for the technology.The dialogue is meant ‌to ⁠guard against shared risks and “prevent a misunderstanding between our two systems,” Bessent said.“We also expect ⁠to exchange best practices for evaluating and testing advanced models before their release, and for keeping human judgment firmly in command of this technology,” he said, adding the two sides had agreed to establish a direct channel for alerting each other to serious incidents.Mr. Trump and /Mr. ​Xi agreed on the new AI alert ‌system during their previous meeting at the White House in September, but Trump at the time also said he was reluctant to add new guardrails because he wanted to preserve US leadership.“As SI advances, so will the need to engage in new areas of risk management — and to demonstrate how two nations ‌can reconcile the demands of competition with the responsibilities of leadership,” Mr. Bessent said.“As we do so, we ​should harbor no illusions about the differences between the United States and China. As I stated earlier, our interests will not always coincide. And our approach to every challenge, likewise, will ⁠not always converge,” he added.Nvidia questionsMr. Bessent’s remarks made no mention of the controversy surrounding Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is facing an investigation by the AI chipmaker’s board after a New York Times report that he had an affair ‌with a businesswoman suspected by U.S. security services of being a Chinese intelligence asset.China’s Foreign Ministry has called the spying accusations “groundless” and “a smear.”Nvidia has said its board has no reason to believe U.S. national security or company secrets were compromised and that Huang has committed to cooperating with the internal review. Huang has told employees he was unfaithful to his wife, but provided no details about the relationship.While Mr. Huang was present at the Trump-Xi summits in Beijing in May and in Washington in September, it was unclear if Trump would bring him ‌to the APEC summit.A fourth Trump-Xi summit this year is expected in December at the U.S.-hosted G20 summit in Miami.Tariff cuts, trade deficitIn remarks that referred to the initial U.S. trade voyage to China in 1784 to trade American ginseng for Chinese tea, porcelain and silk, Bessent said that the U.S.-China ⁠relationship would be sustained by “the wisdom — and the will — to recognize where common purpose must prevail over competing interests.”Bessent referred to ⁠other trade initiatives agreed during the two previous Trump-Xi summits, including the establishment of a “Board of Trade” to determine mutual tariff cuts on $30 billion of non-sensitive goods in each direction, and China’s pledged purchases ‌of US farm goods.A similarly structured “Board of Investment” will provide a structured forum for issues including market access for American companies in China and “increased predictability for Chinese companies,” he said.He reiterated that the US trade ​deficit with China remains a source of friction, but the US objective is to “de-risk, not to decouple” from trade with China. Published - November 11, 2026 08:15 am IST