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BEIJING — It’s unclear if President Trump’s elaborate reception of his Chinese counterpart in Washington dazzled President Xi Jinping, but for the Chinese public, it made quite an impression.

Trump’s rare welcome of Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the airport, as well as the bilateral and cultural events the leaders attended were closely covered — and praised — by Chinese state media. Those who watched at home saw a China elevated in status.

“I read the news that the U.S. reception standards for President Xi are very high,” Xiang Ziyu, a postgraduate student in Beijing, told The Associated Press. “I’m quite impressed because it shows that our country has become really powerful.”

That takeaway was shared by several people interviewed by the AP as well as in comments on Chinese social media, which praised China’s cooperation with the United States.

The official People’s Daily newspaper allocated the entire front page to the trip, featuring six photos of the Xi-Trump meetings.

Meanwhile, on the Chinese search engine Baidu, the three most popular search topics on Friday were the talks between Trump and Xi; the state dinner attended by Xi and Peng; and greetings extended by Xi to Chinese people on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival being celebrated on Friday.

Shen Zuohang, a Beijing resident, felt reassured by the coverage and by Trump and Xi’s seeming agreeability on topics like trade, artificial intelligence and security.

“We have no trade war and no military conflict. Even on the issue of Taiwan we are moving in a good direction instead of having heated confrontation,” Shen said.

“The two sides are handling issues in a more acquiescent way.”

According to China’s Foreign Ministry, Xi called on Trump to oppose the independence of Taiwan, an island democracy China claims as its own territory, and to handle the issue with caution. Trump did not immediately make comments on Taiwan, but had previously described U.S. arms sales to the island as open to negotiations with China.

Xiang, the student, said the summit overall sent a positive signal and will help improve the Chinese public’s opinion of the relations between the two countries.

“It is better than not communicating,” he said.

Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang in Beijing and writer Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

And other companies are trying to address privacy concerns in different ways – without getting rid of the camera.

The Taiwanese firm HTC recently launched Vive Eagle glasses, which cost less than a quarter of Snap’s.

Thomas Dexmier, a vice president at HTC Vive, says that if anyone near an Eagle specs wearer says “stop filming” or “stop recording”, and it is picked up by one of the four microphones, the camera will deactivate.

And he adds that all recordings captured by the glasses are encrypted, and the firm itself cannot see them – though this also means HTC cannot flag harmful content.

“We acknowledge that there are some challenges, potentially becoming a real problem, especially for women,” he said.

He said HTC Vive was working to make it as difficult as possible for the tech to be misused but said it was “too early to comment” on whether the firm would consider a version without cameras.

Ultimately, Wood thinks that camera-enabled glasses are “not going away”.

He says the current moment reminds him of the 2000s, when some people said that mobile phone companies couldn’t install cameras in their devices because of similar concerns over privacy. “There’s an inevitability there,” he says.

“We will have to find a societal norm, a framework for the use of these products.”

Top image credit: Getty.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security drew backlash over an AI-generated social media post featuring a Sikh man facing off against a character made to look like Optimus Prime from the movie “Transformers.” The agency later deleted the image.

Posted Wednesday to the official X account for DHS, the image created by artificial intelligence depicted the “Transformers” character opposite a bearded man wearing a bandanna over his hair. The image, made to look like a movie poster, stated, “America for Americans.”

“Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive Mr. Singh,” it continued.

The post was denounced as “racist propaganda” and “completely unacceptable.”

Other X posts by DHS that reference Transformers remain online.

Sikh Americans and elected officials condemned the image and accused the Trump administration of using racist imagery to stigmatize Sikhs while promoting its deportation campaign.

Hasbro, which owns the franchise, issued a statement saying the posts by DHS were made “without permission and do not represent the Transformers brand or Hasbro.”

Singh, which translates to “lion,” is the most common last name for Sikh men.

DHS said the post depicted Harjinder Singh, an Indian truck driver accused of causing a fatal crash last year that left three people dead after his 18-wheeler collided with their minivan in Florida. He has pleaded not guilty to vehicular homicide charges.

In photos released by DHS, Harjinder Singh wears similar clothes as the man in the now-deleted AI image.

In an emailed statement, a Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not identify themself, called criticism of the post “nonsensical drivel.” The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking why it had removed the post.

“Harjinder Singh is an illegal alien from India who should never have been in our country,” the statement said, adding that he had been granted a commercial driver’s license by California.

In its campaign against immigrant commercial drivers, the Trump administration has repeatedly pointed out Sikh and Indian truckers, who make up about 20% of that industry’s workforce.

The department recently cited California as a problem state that allows drivers who don’t speak sufficient English to obtain licenses. It also started a tip line asking members of the public to report truck drivers they suspect of being undocumented.

The press office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which shared the deleted image in its own X post, called the post “disgusting” and “racist propaganda.”

Noting that the Central Valley is home to a large Sikh community, Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) called the post “completely unacceptable” and said he’s glad it was removed.

“No American should be targeted because of their faith or their name,” Valadao wrote on X.

The Sikh Coalition noted that the DHS post comes as the country mourns the 25th anniversary of 9/11, after which Sikhs were targeted for hate crimes.

“We remain fearless in identifying as Sikhs — even when our government portrays us as enemies,” the coalition wrote on X.