Donald Trump arrives in Beijing on Wednesday night for a two-day visit that both the United States and China hope will stabilise their relationship and prolong a truce in the trade war that began with the liberation day tariffs last year. But with disagreements over Iran and Taiwan as well as economic issues, the best both sides can hope for is that the visit will buy time for each to build up greater resilience against the other.
Xi Jinping will lay on full ceremonial honours for Trump when they meet at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square on Thursday for a formal meeting followed by lunch. Later that day, the US president is due to visit the Temple of Heaven before a state banquet in the evening where guests will include business figures travelling with the US delegation, including Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that during their meetings on Thursday and Friday morning, Xi and Trump would discuss “major issues concerning China-US relations” as well as world peace and development.
“China is willing to work with the US to uphold the principles of equality, respect and mutual benefit, expand co-operation, manage differences and inject more stability and certainty into a world fraught with change,” Guo Jiakun told reporters on Monday.
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The White House said Trump would press Xi on Iran after Washington sanctioned a number of Chinese companies for allegedly helping the Iranian military effort. But it is not clear what role Xi is willing to play in efforts to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Beijing enjoys close relationships with both Iran and the Gulf monarchies and its economic and strategic interest lies in reopening the strait and restarting the flow of oil, gas and other goods. But although China and Pakistan issued joint proposals for peace early in the conflict, Beijing has been diffident in its approach to the conflict.
Xi would like Trump to make a rhetorical shift on Taiwan by declaring that the US opposes independence for the self-governing island, which China regards as part of its territory. But most analysts believe that Trump will not move from the official US position, which is to acknowledge Beijing as China’s sole government without clarifying its position on Taiwan’s legal status.
The Trump administration last December announced the sale of weapons worth $10 billion (€8.5 billion) to Taiwan, the biggest such arms package ever approved. But Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister François Wu said last week that his government was anxious in advance of the meeting in Beijing.
“What we are the most afraid is to put Taiwan on the menu of the talk between Xi Jinping and president Trump,” he told Bloomberg News.
“We worry, and we need to avoid that it happens.”
Although the two leaders will discuss geopolitical issues, the main focus of Trump’s visit is likely to remain on the economic agenda and efforts to de-escalate their trade dispute. After Trump imposed triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods last year, Xi responded by cutting off the supply of rare earth minerals used in advanced manufacturing.
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“Both sides do have an interest in making sure that there’s a stabilisation in the relationship,” said Jacob Gunter, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
“Both sides have the capacity to basically demolish each other’s economies. So this is a high-stakes game where both sides have the ability to really ratchet up the leverage, but neither side I think wants to do that.”
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng were meeting in the South Korean capital Seoul before Trump’s visit to Beijing. The two sides are expected to agree to establish a board of trade and a board of investment to deal with economic disputes between them.
China could agree to buy more US soybeans and Boeing aircraft and Trump may ease restrictions on the sale of some advanced semiconductors. Gunter believes the US president could agree to allow Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers to open manufacturing plants in the US.
“There’s a logic to it that makes sense from the Trump administration’s perspective, particularly if it means investments in the United States and American jobs. I could also see Beijing being quite happy with that as an outcome,” he said.
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Gunter suggests that Xi’s primary objective during his meetings with Trump will be to find an agreement that buys enough time for Beijing to advance its own domestic and international objectives. These include achieving technological, industrial and economic self-reliance and to modernise Chinese society and the military.
“It wants to get rid of these dependencies on the US, the same way the United States is advancing so hard on its kind of derisking or decoupling agenda for rare earths and for other things. It wants to become less dependent on these Chinese supply chains the same way Europe does,” he said.
“What happens if any of these countries decide, you know what, we are self-reliant enough, we don’t need to rely on this? And that’s where the geopolitical questions come in, and that should frighten us all.”
