Trump-Xi summit in Beijing

I write this after President Trump had spent a day in Beijing and held one meeting with the Chinese President Xi Jinping. He may have returned to Washington by the time the article is published and even then, we will not know exactly what transpired at the summit or whether there were any breakthroughs in the understanding between the two countries. The meeting with the Chinese president was initially scheduled for April but was delayed because of escalating tensions with Iran. Instead, the summit took place on May 14 in Beijing.

There is a fairly long history of high-level contacts between the top leaders of the two countries. "Unless they have amnesia, China should remember quite vividly how during Trump's first term, the U.S. imposed multiple rounds of tariff under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 on China during negotiations," said Sarah Schumann, a former US trade official who is now the managing director at Boston Global Strategies. The administration still has multiple options "to increase tariffs on China in pretty short order," she added. US officials spoke at length about the meeting before President Trump flew to Beijing on May 13. On May 8, Jamieson Greer, a trade adviser to the president, sketched out a long list of concerns that the administration planned to raise - from its adherence to past purchase agreements to its approach to artificial intelligence. "There is not a situation where we get China to change the way they govern, the way they manage their economy; that's all baked into their system… But I think there is a world where we find out where we can optimize trade between China and the U.S. to achieve more balance," he said.

At the time of the Trump-Xi summit, the trade balance was in China's favour. Trump was meeting his Chinese counterpart after constitutional changes in 2018 removed presidential term limits, effectively allowing Xi Jinping to remain in power indefinitely. Trump, on the other hand, was living in a political world where he had little respect, even from his followers who were identified as MAGA Republicans. MAGA stands for 'Make America Great Again', slogan first popularised during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Thomas Friedman, a veteran journalist, wrote an article on the Trump-Xi summit, comparing it to the one between Nixon and Mao. The article notes that during a summit arranged by Pakistan, with Nixon flying from Islamabad to Beijing, the US recognised that Communist China had become a major world power.

If serious preparations were done by the Trump administration to prepare for the Beijing summit, experts who were following the lead up to the meeting would be more aware of the important issues that would come for discussion. Bret Stephens, a conservative columnist who contributes to The New York Times had an interesting take on the summit in an article published on May 13, 2026. That was the day when President Trump and his large group boarded the flight to Beijing. He opened his essay - titled, "China Is Much Weaker Than It Seems. That's the Problem" - with the following words: "When President Trump visits Beijing this week, he should have the satisfaction of knowing that time, in the long run, is on America's side. Unfortunately, that's also the problem. That's opposite of conventional wisdom that holds that the US is a fumbling status quo power, akin to Britain in the waning years of its empire, squandering its strength in sideshow wars (South Africa then; Iran now) while failing to grapple with its principal strategic and economic competitor (Germany then; China now). It's this same conventional wisdom that has been telling us that, any year now, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy." But according to Stephens that won't happen for the reason that China lacks the environment that would take it past the US, "just as past would-be contenders - whether they were the Soviet Union, Japan or the European Union - all fell short." Why did this happen? The search for an answer leads him to argue that China will fall short this time. According to Stephens, history tells us that "the most productive national assets are political freedom and open markets - the freer, more open and more competitive, the better. That's a point that often gets lost with those who think that good economics means a wise industrial policy, one that steers government revenues into technologies of the future." This is the reason why President Xi Jinping has ordered heavy investment in robotics, electric cars, lithium-iron batteries and military kit.

According to several American analysts, Trump's view of Xi Jinping has evolved in dramatic ways. According to Oren Cass, chief economist at a think tank called American Compass, "for someone who has been known to change his opinion from time to time, he has been remarkably consistent on this point: Other countries are swindling America and China is the worst offender… Anti-China sentiment helped sweep Trump back into office and he packed his second administration with prominent China hawks, most notably Vice President JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; the Pentagon policy chief, Elbridge Colby; and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative. The assumption on the part of many Americans was that Trump would do everything in his power to sever economic ties between the two countries heavy investments. Instead, he may be on the verge of tying the United States and China irrevocably."

The May summit was the second meeting between the two leaders in a matter of months. The first was held in Seoul in October 2025, where Donald Trump reached what he described as a "trade truce" and directed Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff, to limit any agency actions that might antagonise China. Trump also made the case for granting 600,000 visas to Chinese students - an approach that signals a softer line towards Xi Jinping's China.

There was consensus among China watchers that the top issue between the leadership of the two countries is the future of AI. I will discuss this in the article next week.