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Orange Wang

US Senator Steve Daines, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has wrapped up a days-long trip to China, just weeks ahead of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Washington.
According to accounts online from a Chinese local government and various companies, the Montana Republican travelled from Wednesday to Saturday to China’s tech hub Hangzhou and the southern city of Guangzhou.
The visit is consistent with an earlier South China Morning Post report about expectations for Daines’ return trip to China.
According to the online accounts, the Trump envoy visited a top Chinese university and several technology firms.
Daines’ trip was a sharp contrast to a visit in July by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s bipartisan delegation, which had sought to visit several Chinese tech giants but was denied.


Daines’ visit comes against the backdrop of an intensifying tech war that has become a major front in the US-China strategic rivalry.
Artificial intelligence and space exploration have emerged as critical battlegrounds, and AI is widely expected to be high on the agenda when Trump and Xi sit down later this month.
The 64-year-old lawmaker has emerged as an important backchannel figure between Washington and Beijing in recent years. He travelled to Beijing in May as the two sides sought to stabilise relations before Trump travelled to the Chinese capital later that month.
His August visit was expected to help finalise the agenda for the two powers’ coming summit in Washington. Still, neither Daines nor the US embassy in China has released details of the trip.
According to his social media post, Daines was already in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, on Monday – as was Xi, who was attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s annual summit and paying a state visit.
A social media post published on August 25 by George Glass, the US ambassador to Japan, showed that Daines had travelled to Japan before heading to China. While in Japan, the two discussed the US-Japan partnership and “the future of AI, quantum and other cutting-edge tech and the future of energy”.
On Monday, Guangzhou-based EHang, a manufacturer of autonomous electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, announced that Daines visited the company on Saturday and took a flight in one of its products with his wife, Cindy Daines.
The couple was accompanied in their visit by Pauline Kao, the US consul general in Guangzhou; Geng Shuang, vice-president of the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and a former deputy permanent representative of China to the United Nations in New York; and several Guangzhou government officials.
Daines said the test flight reminded him of scenes featuring flying cars in the American sci-fi cartoon The Jetsons, and he welcomed EHang’s efforts to expand into the US market, according to an article attributed to the company and published on Monday by the Chinese industry portal youuav.com.




The article also noted that the US senator recalled his time in Guangzhou as a Procter & Gamble executive.
Daines is one of the few incumbent US senators with experience living and working in China.
He visited Hangzhou from August 26 to 29, accompanied by Geng, US ambassador to China David Perdue and US consul general in Shanghai Christian Marchant, according to a Zhejiang provincial foreign affairs office statement on Saturday.
The statement said that in a meeting on Friday, Daines told Zhejiang’s governor, Liu Jie, that he was willing to help promote friendly exchanges between local governments in the two countries.
Liu said Zhejiang was ready to deepen cooperation with the US in areas including industrial innovation, technology and trade and investment.
Daines also visited Zhejiang University on Friday, where Ren Shaobo, the university’s Communist Party secretary, told him that the institution hoped to further strengthen exchanges with the US.
That was days after the Pentagon ordered 30 US universities to scrutinise their ties with Chinese research partners.
In Hangzhou, Daines also visited Bota, an AI-driven biomanufacturing company, and watched a demonstration of next-generation AI smart glasses at Rokid.
He also visited space-intelligence firm Manycore Tech on Friday. The Zhejiang government’s statement said they discussed “the prospects and challenges of AI development”.
On the same day, Daines toured Star Vision, a private commercial space company.
The firm said on social media on Saturday that it had “discussed the application of satellite remote sensing technology” with the delegation and “[looked] forward to deepening cooperation between the two sides in the years ahead”.


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Montana Republican’s trip coincides with intensifying tech war that has become a major front in the US-China strategic rivalry


Montana Republican’s trip coincides with intensifying tech war that has become a major front in the US-China strategic rivalry.


Trump envoy Daines visits Chinese AI, space firms to pave way for Xi summit in US

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Montana Republican’s trip coincides with intensifying tech war that has become a major front in the US-China strategic rivalry

Montana Republican’s trip coincides with intensifying tech war that has become a major front in the US-China strategic rivalry