Few relationships in the world are more important than the one between the United States and China. The decisions made by this pair of superpowers on trade, A.I., climate change and matters of war and peace will shape the future of humanity in profound ways.
Right now, that relationship is not good, to put it mildly. That’s why everyone is paying such close attention to President Trump’s visit to Beijing this week, the first of four potential meetings with President Xi Jinping of China this year. The stakes could not be higher. My colleague Alexandra Stevenson, one of our China correspondents, writes about the prospects for the summit.
In the weeks leading up to the summit that begins today with Xi Jinping, Donald Trump has sounded markedly more conciliatory toward China. Xi is “highly respected,” Trump says. Their relationship is “extremely good.” Their meeting will be “monumental” and replete with deals for American beef, soybeans and Boeing airplanes.
“Good things are going to happen,” Trump said before he left.
It’s a big shift from the anger that Trump voiced on the campaign trail and during his first presidential term, when he said he would not allow China to “rape our country” and vowed to make China pay for the jobs and industries the U.S. has lost.
And yet, expectations for the summit remain low. Trump will get the red carpet treatment. There will likely be some short-term transactional wins. But it’s unlikely to lead to a significant change in a relationship that has long been on the rocks.
The best anyone can hope for, experts say, is that both leaders signal stability. Because for all of Trump’s emphasis on his “friendship” with Xi, nearly everything the Trump administration is doing has put the two countries on the path toward a worse relationship, not a better one.
A race to self-sufficiency
China’s ruling Communist Party has long been preoccupied with insulating the country from geopolitical crises. It’s using subsidies and state support to prioritize self-sufficiency in energy, technology and supply chains when it can, and making sure critical resources like oil, soybeans and cutting-edge chips are reliably available, when it can’t.
The government has redoubled these efforts ever since Trump singled out Beijing in his first presidential term. As Xi put it in a 2020 essay, the goal is to pull “international industrial chains into tighter dependence on China” to “form a powerful ability to counter and deter any deliberate supply disruptions by external actors.”
Trump may have dialed back his rhetoric. But his second term has nonetheless been defined by just these sorts of disruptions, some more deliberate than others. Trump’s trade war, his ousting of the leader of Venezuela, and his military campaign in Iran have all hit China where it hurts.
The trade war has been the most direct attack on Chinese interests. While Trump has rolled back some tariffs on Chinese goods ahead of this week’s summit, his trade officials are pursuing something more antagonistic. They’ve used sanctions and trade agreements to compel companies and countries to remove China from their supply chains and ban the export of critical resources China needs, like American chips.
China is now threatening legal action against those who comply with the U.S., and moving faster to be independent in areas like A.I.
The capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was not, from the Trump administration’s perspective, primarily aimed at China. But it made Beijing angry anyway. Not only did the operation take place hours after China’s special envoy for Latin America met with Maduro, but China viewed it as an attack on a longstanding source of cheap oil and a threat to other raw materials in Latin America like copper and lithium.
Finally, the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, and the killing of its supreme leader, put China’s other source of discounted oil at risk. The resulting blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, has driven up oil prices and hurt China’s already faltering economy. China is far less dependent on foreign oil today than it was a decade ago, but it’s still the world’s biggest buyer.
In all three cases, Beijing has condemned the actions in daily and weekly news conferences, calling them acts of “bullying” and violations of international law.
A vicious cycle?
The fragile truce between the U.S. and China has held, but pressure is growing on all sides. Most experts expect a fresh round of escalations and tit-for-tat tariffs not long after this meeting.
With Trump, predictions are always tricky, of course. But the danger is that the two countries are heading into a self-perpetuating spiral.
Washington’s actions to undermine Chinese economic security have set off alarm bells in Beijing, prompting China to accelerate its efforts to secure supply chains (and also prepare to use them against its enemies). It’s doing this in part by manufacturing more at home. That, in turn, will lead Chinese companies to export more, which will heighten geopolitical tensions, which will set off a new chain reaction of political backlash.
These forces are hard to stop, once they have started. It will certainly take more than friendly words, and a few deals for soybeans and airplanes.
Related: David Sanger, our White House and national security correspondent, explains in this video how Trump’s rhetoric about China has shifted from that of his first term.
ASK A CORRESPONDENT
David Pierson, our China correspondent, is answering questions from our readers all week about U.S.-China relations.
With the A.I. rivalry increasingly defining the U.S.-China relationship, is there any sign that either side is willing to treat A.I. risk as a shared problem, or is the competitive dynamic now too entrenched for any meaningful cooperation? — Simon Ferreira, Australia
Trump will likely raise A.I. issues at the summit, U.S. officials said. But there is not much optimism that China and the U.S. can prevent A.I. from becoming part of the arms race between the two superpowers. Just last month, China scuttled Meta’s acquisition of a Chinese A.I. firm, Manus, a move that was interpreted as a warning to other Chinese A.I. companies seeking to work with foreign partners. At the same time, the U.S. continues to restrict Chinese access to advanced A.I. chip exports.
The mistrust between the two sides has hindered cooperation on shared goals. A pledge by President Biden and Xi Jinping to keep A.I. out of the reach of nuclear weapons has not generated much more discussion, for example. Chinese scholars say they are suspicious of U.S. calls for guardrails, viewing them as bids to slow down China’s development.
For more: Trump’s entourage in China includes top officials, several powerful C.E.O.s, like Elon Musk of Tesla and Tim Cook, the soon-to-retire chief of Apple, and members of the Trump family. Here’s the list.
Here’s what to watch at the Trump-Xi summit.
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