Low-hanging fruit for Xi and Trump to pluck at Shenzhen Apec summit

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is set to take place in Shenzhen on November 18 and 19. Shenzhen will also be playing host to the first of two further meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump this year.

When the two leaders met in May and September, they called for “constructive strategic stability” as a prescription for US-China relations. Both sides are keen to maintain the fragile detente, in part due to domestic considerations.

Beijing wants to minimise flux and uncertainty in foreign relations ahead of the 21st national congress, due to be held in the fourth quarter of next year, where key leadership reshuffles are expected to be announced. Trump, on the other hand, is eager to secure quick, visible “wins” on trade and investment, especially after the Republican Party’s disastrous election performance in the US midterms.

Yet slogans alone do not make for improvements in relations. If goodwill is to last, real results must be delivered. Here are three suggestions.

First, as a prerequisite for wider trust-building, both leaders should embrace substantive commitments to facilitate academic, student, cultural and journalistic exchanges. While the number of American students in China has rebounded from the nadir reached during the pandemic, the figure today – fewer than 2,000 – marks a sharp decline from 11,000 in 2019.

President Xi has pledged to invite 100,000 American students to China. Yet numbers are only half the story. Genuine understanding requires full immersion. Invited students must be afforded ample time to get to know China, with its diverse cultures and cities and its rich history, up close.

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The Trump administration should also extend an olive branch by tackling the institutionalised mistrust that has long discouraged American students from enrolling in Chinese institutions. The State Department’s travel advisory, for one, warns of a “serious risk of wrongful detention” and “arbitrary enforcement of local laws”.

More carefully calibrated, balanced official messaging including both the upsides and risks of travel to China is needed. This could prove more valuable to civil society exchange than a resumption of the Fulbright scholarship programme for the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, even if that remains long overdue.

Both leaders should also expand and commit to more consistent policies on journalist visas – such as raising visa caps while refraining from excessively zealous and paranoid policing.

Second, governance of artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a rare area where both leaders seek to strike a common chord. This was clear in the run-up to and the read-out from the September meeting.

The AI incident notification mechanism floated by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent should be formalised through the appointment of heads and the formation of a working group featuring representatives from all the key ministries and departments involved in AI safety from the two countries.

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Given the apparent absence of trust, proof of concept – for example, an AI incident swiftly resolved through collaboration between the two parties – is very much necessary to convince both governments of the merits of coordination.

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Apec’s gathering of CEOs also allows the two leaders to tap insights and gain support in managing AI capabilities and risks.

When it comes to social impact, China and the US face similar challenges in grappling with youth unemployment induced by AI-centric automation, the prowess and influence of large tech companies, and the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation, especially on social media. The summit should provide a tentative mandate for the technocratic leads in both governments to collaborate to tackle such issues.

Productive engagement on AI can serve as an exemplar for coordination over other frontier technologies. Consider, for instance, the joint identification of limits to competition in space, biotechnology, deep sea mining and even nuclear non-proliferation.

Despite the intensifying technological competition between the two great powers, neither’s interests are served by military confrontations or technological developments that evade human control and accountability.

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Finally, the 90 million-strong economy of the Greater Bay Area, in which Shenzhen sits, may serve as the premier site for US-China collaboration in culture and higher education. The Chinese leadership should tap the region’s exceptional university ecosystem – Hong Kong’s universities have made significant climbs in international rankings – as convening platforms of important conversations.

From youth entrepreneurship to climate change, from cross-cultural understanding to the plural challenges of AI, the Greater Bay Area can spearhead Beijing’s calls for deeper people-to-people dialogues with the United States. It should also prioritise outreach to states and cities, especially those with freshly elected administrations eager to pursue opportunities with their Chinese counterparts.

Hong Kong, too, is a vital part of the Greater Bay Area. Even while federal-level relations ebb and flow, conversations bringing together policymakers, investors and academics, such as the recently concluded Family Business Summit, remain integral to ameliorating misunderstandings and facilitating cross-border capital flows.

Last month at the East Kowloon Cultural Centre, I had the pleasure of watching a musical that fused Cantonese and Italian opera. A few weeks later, in a fully packed Kai Tak Stadium, The Weeknd debuted “Hong Kong”, which heavily drew on Faye Wong’s 1993 hit “Monsoon” and became an instant hit.

Ambitious, audacious cultural synthesis has always been in Hong Kong’s DNA.

When it comes to hosting a regular high-level business and investment forum between the two powers, there are few places better than Hong Kong. At times as tumultuous as these, Beijing and Washington can lean into Hong Kong as a site of organic experimentation and faithful interpretation of China.