Insider The Economist, 28.09.2026 David Rennie, editor geopolítico
Not since the cold war stand-off between America and the Soviet Union have two countries wielded such outsize power to save or harm the world. Consider such threats as climate change, conflict in the Gulf or artificial intelligence running amok. In each case, America and China are unusually important actors. No solution is truly viable that does not involve them—provided Donald Trump and Xi Jinping can overcome mutual distrust and order their respective systems to collaborate.
Are the two leaders ready to step up? Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister and—in private life—a scholar of Chinese Communist Party politics, is well placed to judge. He has up-to-date knowledge of Mr Trump, having been Australia’s ambassador in Washington until six months ago. As prime minister he hosted Mr Xi at his residence in Canberra, where the pair talked in Mandarin about the sweep of history over glasses of red wine. Later, as a sinologist, he read everything published under the Chinese leader’s name, a feat that he used to write a book, “On Xi Jinping: How Xi's Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World”. In his latest role as president of the Asia Society, Mr Rudd recently led American bigwigs to Beijing to meet Wang Huning, a top ideological adviser to Mr Xi, and other senior figures.
For the latest edition of Inside Geopolitics I interviewed Mr Rudd in New York on Friday, in the closing moments of a three-day state visit to Washington by Mr Xi. We talked about trade, Taiwan and the problem he calls most urgent, the regulation of AI. For now, Mr Rudd fears that progress is being thwarted by each country’s desire to win a contest for AI primacy. “The default Chinese position is exactly the same as President Trump’s position. This is an active strategic competition in AI across the stack. And whoever wins AI, wins,” he worries.
Mr Rudd pins his hopes on talks now under way between American and Chinese officials. If the world is lucky, he says, they will agree on AI-safety principles and protocols before catastrophe strikes. “Let us suspend judgment for a month or two and see how this channel will perform,” he suggests. If that does not sound very long, Mr Rudd concurs. “Time is ticking,” he says. He sees grounds for both optimism and alarm.
