In the months leading up to President Xi Jinping's planned September visit to Washington for a summit with US President Donald Trump, a series of smaller trade and technology rifts has emerged between the world's two largest economies, straining the diplomatic groundwork for the meeting.
The flashpoints span tensions over Chinese artificial intelligence models, new US restrictions on advanced robotics, friction over optical modules, and an expanded forced labour blacklist—each adding pressure to an already fraught relationship in which economic statecraft increasingly targets supply chains and next-generation technologies.
With both governments testing how far they can use trade and technology rules to safeguard national interests, the summit, if it proceeds, will arrive at a moment when disputes framed in national security terms are hardening on both sides, raising the question of whether high-level diplomacy can still defuse the accumulating technical and commercial conflicts.