US President Donald Trump made his long-awaited trip to China this week, arriving in the country on May 13 and holding a bilateral meeting and state banquet with China’s Xi Jinping on May 14. He will have tea and lunch with Xi on May 15 before leaving for Washington. Trump’s visit was the first by a US president to China since 2017 – during Trump’s first term.
From Beijing, Trump and Xi have promised a new era for bilateral relations. Xi even presented an entirely new formula: “building a constructive Sino-American relationship of strategic stability”. According to the reading from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairsit means “positive stability with cooperation as the pillar, healthy stability with competition within appropriate limits, constant stability with manageable differences, and lasting stability with predictable peace.”
Appealing to Trump’s desire to carve out a place in the history books, Xi expressed interest in working with Trump to “make 2026 a historic and landmark year that opens a new chapter in China-US relations.”
Trump put it in simpler terms: “The relationship between China and the United States is going to be better than ever. »
While Xi seemed intent on addressing the broad outlines of the relationship, Trump’s focus was narrower: trade and economic cooperation. Trump was accompanied by a group of CEOs from major American companies, including Apple, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla and Qualcomm. In a post to Truth Social Before landing in China, Trump said his “very first request” to Xi would be that China “open up” to American companies represented by CEOs.
During the summit, Trump even paraded CEOs in front of Xi and made them introduce yourself. He said business leaders were there to “pay their respects.” [Xi] and in China.
Several of these companies – notably Nvidia and Qualcomm – play a central role in Sino-US competition in semiconductors and artificial intelligence. In fact, the US government itself has placed restrictions on their ability to sell advanced technologies to China. But these tensions were not discussed during the meeting.
In fact, some of the points raised by the United States during the visit were eerily reminiscent of an earlier, simpler era in Sino-US relations, when Washington still had hopes for fair market access and an appetite for large-scale Chinese investment. In a statement posted on FacebookThe White House said Trump and Xi “discussed ways to strengthen economic cooperation between our two countries, including expanding American companies’ access to the Chinese market and increasing Chinese investment in our industries.” This phrase would have found its place under the Clinton and Bush administrations.
More recently, Chinese investment has begun to be a point of contention, with many U.S. policymakers viewing Chinese funds with skepticism and seeking to insulate sensitive sectors from Chinese involvement. It’s been a long time since a US president openly called for “increased Chinese investment.”
Although the United States focused on trade, it was unclear what Washington gained from it. On May 13, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held the final preparatory discussions on trade outcomes in South Korea. The specific outcomes of these negotiations, as well as the summit discussions, were not available at the time of writing. Instead, there was vague mention of “Chinese interest in buying more American oil,” and Trump pushed to increase purchases of American agricultural products. Neither subject appeared in the Chinese statement, nor did cooperation to stem the flow of fentanyl – another US priority.
China’s only mention of trade results was to welcome the “generally balanced and positive results” of the Bessent-He talks, without specifying what exactly those results were.
Rather than trade deals, Xi has focused on broad aspects of the relationship, hoping to set a tone for stable competition among equals. But he issued a warning to Trump about Taiwan: “The US side must exercise greater caution in handling the Taiwan issue…Otherwise, the two countries will experience clashes and even conflicts, seriously jeopardizing their entire relationship.” »
Xi emphasized that “the Taiwan issue is the most important issue in China-US relations,” a position that Beijing held long before normalization. In 1971, Chinese leaders would not even talk to Henry Kissinger until they received assurances on Taiwan, and the most of these early conversations dealt with the American position towards Taiwan.
However, Trump seems to simply ignore Xi’s comments on Taiwan. He did not mention the issue himself, but “moved on to the next topic without acknowledging” Xi’s remarks, the The Washington Post reportedciting an anonymous White House official.
On other geopolitical flashpoints, the Chinese statement said Trump and Xi discussed “the situation in the Middle East” (a polite euphemism for the conflict in the Gulf resulting from Israeli-US strikes on Iran), “the Ukrainian crisis” (another euphemism for Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, now in its fifth year), and “the Korean Peninsula” (i.e. the rapid expansion of the country’s nuclear program). North Korea and persistent security tensions with the South). China has not provided any details on any of these areas.
The White House statements do not mention Ukraine or North Korea, but provide few details on the Middle East. “Both countries have agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” the White House said in a statement. a post on Facebook. He also said: “Both sides agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy. »
Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi conveyed a similar message to visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, saying that “the international community shares a common concern about the restoration of normal and safe passage across the strait.” However, Wang also assured Araghchi that “China supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security” – a position that was not included in the White House summary.
According to the White House, “President Xi also made clear China’s opposition to the militarization of the Strait and any attempt to impose a toll for its use.” Given the massive volume of China’s foreign trade, Beijing is categorically unwilling to set a precedent for coastal states to restrict the flow of shipping on neighboring waterways.
On May 14, the same day as the Trump-Xi summit, Iran declared that the Strait of Hormuz was in fact open – as long as ships transiting through it cooperated with the Iranian Navy.
If the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz was linked to the Trump-Xi meeting – and if it continues – it constitutes by far the biggest result of the negotiations. Otherwise, the main takeaway is simply that the summit happened. It has been nearly a decade since a U.S. president last visited China. As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said told Fox News while on the way to Beijing, the summit was a success simply “because we are going there and we will be able to talk to them rather than talking to them”.
The White House called it a “good meeting” and Trump was generally effusive. He repeatedly called Xi a “great leader” and said he and the Chinese leader had “a fantastic relationship, whenever there were difficulties, we resolved them.”
“It’s an honor to be your friend, and relations between China and the United States are going to be better than ever,” Trump told Xi at the end of his prepared speech before the start of the summit proper.
Rubio was a little less optimistic. He noted that China remains “the primary geopolitical policy challenge” for the United States.
“Our interests are going to be in conflict with theirs, and to avoid wars and maintain peace and stability in the world, we are going to have to manage them,” Rubio continued. This also appears to have been the main theme of Xi’s discussions.
Rubio’s presence in China was particularly interesting, as he is technically banned from entering the country. In 2020, then-Senator Rubio was banned from entering China and placed under unspecified sanctions for its support of the Uyghur people and Hong Kong. China found a workaround by simply changing the Chinese characters used to refer to Rubio – effectively giving it a new name in Chinese that was not on the no-entry list.
The serious human rights concerns that Rubio previously spoke about were completely absent from the agenda this time.