He Lifeng is a Vice Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. He became a Politburo member at the 20th Party Congress in 2022 and succeeded Liu He as vice premier in March 2023, with responsibility for economic and financial affairs (Source: thinkchina.sg) (Source: en.wikipedia.org). He leads China's side in economic and trade consultations with the United States, where his counterpart is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; in 2026 those talks came to include artificial intelligence (Source: reuters.com).
Background
He worked in Fujian province for 25 years, in leading posts in Quanzhou, Fuzhou and Xiamen, and served there alongside Xi Jinping; Lianhe Zaobao's Yang Danxu, writing in ThinkChina, describes him as close to and trusted by Xi and as a leading figure of the party's "Fujian faction." In 2009 he moved to Tianjin as deputy party secretary of the municipality, head of the Binhai New Area working committee and chairman of the Tianjin People's Political Consultative Conference. He joined the National Development and Reform Commission in 2014 and became its director in 2017 (Source: thinkchina.sg).
Role in U.S.–China AI talks
He and Bessent, with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Chinese trade negotiator Li Chenggang, held talks at JPMorgan Chase's headquarters in New York on September 20, 2026, ahead of a Trump–Xi summit in Washington that week. At their close Bessent said the U.S. side had proposed a new U.S.–China AI dialogue with an emphasis on national security, including a notification system for "common goals and common threats" covering AI-related incidents rising to a national-security level, for Trump and Xi to consider. Greer said U.S. export controls on advanced AI chips and chipmaking equipment were not on the agenda for the AI talks. He and Li left without speaking to the press; the Xinhua readout described "frank, in-depth and constructive exchanges" on economic and trade issues and only briefly acknowledged that AI was discussed. China's Ministry of Commerce said He would also lead a delegation of Chinese companies to the United States for consultations before the summit (Source: reuters.com).
POLITICO, citing four people familiar with the arrangement, reported on September 22, 2026 that the mechanism is an open line of communication between Bessent and He rather than a formal body of experts, and that Chinese officials had not publicly agreed to it (Source: politico.com). U.S. officials cited by WIRED on September 23, 2026 expected the system to take weeks to finalise, aiming for a framework agreed to by Trump by the time Bessent and He meet again in Shenzhen in about two months; unresolved elements included which incidents rise to a national-security issue and explicit sign-on from China (Source: wired.com). He attended the Xi–Trump talks at the White House on September 24, 2026, alongside Cai Qi and Wang Yi, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs readout, which reports that the two sides' economic and trade teams had reached "a new joint arrangement" and does not mention an AI incident-notification mechanism (Chinese MFA readout: President Xi Jinping Holds Talks with U.S. President Donald J. Trump (September 24, 2026)). The talks are covered in detail at US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics.
Relationships
- related: Scott Bessent — U.S. counterpart in economic, trade and AI talks
- related: Xi Jinping — served together in Fujian
- related: US-China AI Competition: Different Races, Different Metrics — the 2026 AI dialogue and notification mechanism
- related: AI Incident Reporting — the proposed incident-notification channel
- related: Chinese MFA readout: President Xi Jinping Holds Talks with U.S. President Donald J. Trump (September 24, 2026) — listed as attending the September 24, 2026 talks