China is willing to enhance mutual trust and deepen cooperation with both South Korea and Japan, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday, in commenting on the 11th China-Japan-South Korea Trilateral Foreign Ministers' Meeting and the sixth China-Japan High-Level Economic Dialogue held in Tokyo on Saturday.
At a joint press conference with Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul after the meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China, Japan and South Korea have agreed to further strengthen communication, enhance mutual trust and deepen cooperation.
Wang also met with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in Tokyo on Friday.
"The foreign ministers of China, Japan and the South Korea exchanged views on trilateral cooperation as well as regional and international issues in an in-depth way. They unanimously agreed on maintaining the momentum of trilateral cooperation, advancing practical collaboration across various fields, expanding areas of cooperation, and deepening people-to-people exchanges to generate new outcomes that benefit the people of the three countries and the region," said Guo Jiakun, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, at a press conference in Beijing.
"China and Japan agreed to implement the important consensus reached during the meeting between President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in Lima [on the sidelines of the 31st APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in November 2024], comprehensively advance the China-Japan strategic relationship of mutual benefit, and strengthen exchanges and cooperation in various fields to ensure steady and long-term development of bilateral relations. A total of 15 government departments from both sides attended the high-level economic dialog, engaging in in-depth discussions on macroeconomic policies, trade and investment, the digital economy, green development, environmental protection, people-to-people exchanges, and regional cooperation," said the spokesman.
"A close neighbor is better than a distant relative. In the face of a world with increasing uncertainty and instability, China is willing to work with Japan and South Korea to continue enhancing mutual trust and deepening cooperation, removing disruptions, and jointly contributing to peace and prosperity of the region and the world," he said.
China ready to deepen mutual trust, cooperation with S Korea, Japan: spokesman
It's impossible to build a system of governance that ensures artificial intelligence (AI) systems always operate and police themselves in alignment with both human and machine well-being without the participation of China, American columnist Thomas L. Friedman said in an article on Tuesday.
Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and the author of "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century," attended the China Development Forum 2025 held on March 23 and 24 in Beijing.
Based on what he saw and heard during the event, Friedman published an article in the New York Times titled "What I'm Hearing in China This Week About Our Shared Future" on Tuesday.
"There is an earthshaking event coming — the birth of artificial general intelligence (AGI). The United States and China are the two superpowers closing in on AGI — systems that will be as smart or smarter than the smartest human and able to learn and act on their own," the article reads.
Friedman cited an M.I.T. Technology Review report on the "16 humanoid robots" that danced on stage during China's televised Spring Festival gala this year which read: "Clad in vibrant floral print jackets, they took part in a signature ... dance, twirling red handkerchiefs in unison with human dancers."
Friedman wrote in his column that "In their day job, these robots work assembling electric vehicles. Dancing was just their hobby."
"The advances that China has made on AI in just the past year have made it absolutely clear that Beijing and Washington are now the world's two AI superpowers," Friedman wrote.
He mentioned a recent report by Morgan Stanley describing China's dominance over the West in the humanoid robot industry, saying the country is home to a majority of the top-listed companies in this sector.
Noting AI systems and humanoid robots offer so much potential benefit to humanity, Friedman warned they could also be hugely destructive and destabilizing if not embedded with the right values and controls.
He repeatedly stressed the importance of collaboration between the U.S. and China in AI.
"Because what Soviet-American nuclear arms control was to world stability since the 1970s, U.S.-Chinese AI collaboration to make sure we effectively control these rapidly advancing AI systems will be for the stability of tomorrow's world," Friedman wrote.
"China has greatly narrowed the gap with us and surpassed the other democracies. This can't be done without Beijing. So guess who's coming to dinner. It's a table for two now," he said.
Friedman wrote in the article that "Once AGI arrives, if we are not assured that these systems will be embedded with common trust standards, the United States and China will not be able to do anything together."
He pointed out that in this case, neither side will trust anything they trade with the other, because AI will be in everything that is digital and connected, including cars, watches, toasters, chairs, implants, and notepads.
"So if there is no trust between the U.S. and China and each of the two countries has their own AI systems, it will be the TikTok problem on steroids. A lot of trade will just grind to a halt, with only soybeans for soy sauce sold to each other," Friedman wrote, saying "It will be a world of high-tech feudalism."
Friedman said he was taken with a speech by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari during the conference, who said that "We should build more trust between humans before we develop truly superintelligent AI agents. But we are now doing exactly the opposite. All over the world, trust between humans is collapsing. Too many countries think that to be strong is to trust no one and be completely separated from others. If we forget our shared human legacies and lose trust with everyone outside us, that will leave us easy prey for an out-of-control AI."
Global AI governance cannot happen without China: American columnist
