(Bloomberg) — Chinese President Xi Jinping joked about security backdoors while presenting a pair of Xiaomi Corp. smartphones to his South Korean counterpart, a rare moment of spontaneous levity captured during a week of tense trade negotiations with Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
Xi, in South Korea to meet Trump on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, presented the pair of devices to Korean President Lee Jae Myung. In a video circulated on social media, Lee asked: \u201cIs the line secure?\u201d Xi chuckled, pointed at the gadgets and replied through an interpreter: \u201cYou can check if there\u2019s a backdoor.\u201d The two leaders burst into laughter.<\/p>\n
The exchange was striking because the issue of security and alleged espionage is a sensitive one and a major thorn in US-Chinese relations. American lawmakers have raised the possibility that tech companies such as Huawei Technologies Co. build backdoors \u2014 ways to gain access to sensitive data \u2014 into their equipment or services, something the firms have repeatedly denied. Washington officials have in turn broached the idea of working similar access points or tracking technology into products such as Nvidia Corp. chips \u2014 which the US company has publicly opposed.<\/p>\n
Xiaomi\u2019s shares rose as much as 4.4% in Hong Kong Monday, propped up in part by EV sales data. Retail investors have in the past piled into the stock of companies that Xi or other senior Chinese officials highlight during public appearances.<\/p>\n
The Xiaomi handsets featured curved displays from a South Korean supplier, a staffer is heard saying in the video, underscoring collaboration between the two nations\u2019 engineers. Beijing-based Xiaomi is a longtime Samsung Display Co. customer. Xi\u2019s and Lee\u2019s banter coincided with hints of warming relations between the two Asian nations.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92025 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Bloomberg) — Chinese President Xi Jinping joked about security backdoors while presenting a pair of Xiaomi Corp. smartphones…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[25912,1877,54,85,46,26096,321,11471,125,8429,1524],"class_list":["post-112893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-asia-pacific-economic-cooperation","tag-bloomberg","tag-donald-trump","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-mobile","tag-south-korea","tag-technology","tag-xi-jinping","tag-xiaomi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}