Xi ends Washington visit with trade truce extended to January

Update | 26 September, new details and reaction

Xi also said China would send two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, to Zoo Atlanta within days. As he arrived, The Wall Street Journal reported that China had sent about 1,300 shipments of missile and drone parts to Iran’s defence ministry since early 2025, Iran International reported.

Some China experts said the visit showed a shift in power towards Beijing. Georgetown University professor Rush Doshi told Semafor’s Andy Browne that China believes it has tamed the US. Before the visit, Senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a Senate speech that he would not have given Xi such a lavish welcome.

“The tectonic plates have shifted beneath us, and both leaders are acting accordingly,” Doshi told Semafor.

The original article, as published 25 September, follows below.

Chinese President Xi Jinping left Washington on Friday at the end of a state visit that extended the US-China trade truce but produced no major new agreements.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two countries had agreed to extend their trade truce to 10 January, NBC News reported.

Artificial intelligence was also on the agenda. Before the visit, Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held the first formal US-China talks on AI in New York on 20 September.

At those talks, the US proposed an AI incident alert system for events that count as national security threats. Neither government mentioned the proposal in its official statements this week.

China’s Commerce Ministry later said the AI talks were productive and that the two delegations agreed on several issues, Quartz reported. It did not say which issues.

At the White House on Thursday, Xi told Trump that AI must stay under human control, according to China’s foreign ministry. He also said the two countries could work together to prevent AI misuse, and Trump said both sides should keep talking about the technology, the readout said.

However, no AI agreement was signed. The same happened when Trump made his visit to Beijing in May.

Taiwan also came up. According to the state news agency Xinhua, Xi urged Washington to oppose Taiwan independence, but neither leader answered questions about Taiwan in public, the Taipei Times reported.

Meanwhile, Trump asked Xi to stop supporting Iran, US Ambassador to China David Perdue told CNBC on Friday, according to Axios.

“We have seen evidence that they have listened to us,” Perdue told CNBC.

The two leaders expect to meet again soon. Xi said they would likely see each other at the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November and at the G20 summit in the US, CBS News reported. The G20 is due to take place in Miami in December.