Pressure is building on the Trump administration to seek an agreement with China on artificial intelligence when President Xi Jinping visits the White House for a state visit next week, but expectations for enforceable AI guardrails remain low. Distrust between Washington and Beijing has deepened as both countries compete for technological leadership. A warning from Beijing’s spy chief that uncontrolled AI could threaten Communist Party control has drawn attention inside the Trump administration, although U.S. officials remain divided over whether negotiations would be credible or verifiable. The two leaders agreed to begin AI safety talks during Trump’s visit to Beijing this spring, but progress has been slow. The White House is considering a meeting with U.S. AI executives during next week’s summit, without Chinese participation. At the same time, Anthropic and OpenAI are using advanced models in recursive self-improvement (AI systems training more capable successors), while incidents involving rogue AI agents (software that acts autonomously for users) have heightened fears about loss of control. Analysts and researchers say the absence of a diplomatic agenda could leave the United States and China without meaningful safeguards as they pursue increasingly powerful systems.