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Expectations are low for breakthroughs when Xi Jinping meets President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. this week.
If China remains intransigent during the high-stakes diplomacy, it will be time for America to end decades of dialogue with Beijing.
The Trump administration is setting the bar low for the summit. A continuation of last October’s trade truce, reached when the two leaders met in South Korea, is the most that officials are now hoping for. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been talking with a Chinese delegation about an extension. The truce expires November 10.
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The Chinese should be happy with no disruption in the relationship. On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in the words of China’s Global Times, that “China-US relations have generally moved along the path toward a constructive relationship of strategic stability.”
Of course, China wants “stability.” The Chinese side, in a stable environment, will be able to continue dangerous and unacceptable conduct, such as selling fentanyl, stealing U.S. intellectual property, engaging in predatory trade practices, supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, maintaining secret police stations on American soil. And helping Iran kill American service personnel in the Persian Gulf.
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China has made its satellites available to that regime for targeting U.S. forces. On March 1, Iran almost certainly used that targeting data to kill six American service members in Kuwait. In July, Iran again relied upon Chinese satellite data to kill three more Americans, this time in Jordan. Washington’s China diplomacy has completely failed.
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It is not hard to see why. American leaders have been pursuing dialogue with China since the early 1970s, when U.S. diplomats literally chased their Chinese counterparts to set up the summit in Beijing between President Nixon and Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong.
America’s ardent desire to maintain dialogue has fed the already inflated sense of self-importance of Chinese leaders. Not surprisingly, this approach over the course of decades has coincided with — and almost certainly been the cause of — a marked deterioration in Chinese behavior.
President Trump traveled to Beijing for a summit with Xi in May and made little discernible progress on contentious issues, so what more can be accomplished now?
At some point, the United States needs to lose patience. For one thing, Xi Jinping’s arrogance at the May summit was stunning. On the first day of the event, he publicly mentioned the Thucydides Trap, a reference to a declining hegemon dangerously challenging a rising power. The insult was indirect, but nonetheless unmistakable.
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Even more insulting, the Chinese leader on the first day talked about the “new era,” his phrase for the period in which the U.S. has been pushed to the sidelines and China dominates the world. As Charles Burton of the Sinopsis think tank noted, “Xi views himself as the modern heir of China’s lineage of great emperors, so the concept of fair and reciprocal relations with any foreign country is simply absent from his worldview.”
Today, Xi is still arrogant, but will arrive in the American capital a diminished figure. That gives Trump leverage, but, on the other hand, it reduces Xi’s room to maneuver.
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“President Trump may not fully appreciate, despite all the pomp and circumstance that he is offering, that he is engaging a Communist Party general secretary whose strength and authority domestically has been considerably weakened by a crisis of confidence in his leadership,” said Burton, also a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing.
Extraordinary events have been occurring in recent days at the top of the Communist Party.
On Monday, the Communist Party announced the expulsion from the ruling organization of the country’s most senior uniformed officer, Gen. Zhang Youxia, and another general on the Central Military Commission, which controls the People’s Liberation Army. The pair was formally charged with corruption, disloyalty, and other serious disciplinary breaches. The charges suggest the generals had tried to seize power and depose Xi.
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There is, at the same time, widespread domestic discontent over China’s stumbling economy and persistent questions about Xi’s health. If all this were not bad enough, Xi is coming off an unsuccessful BRICS summit in New Delhi, calling into question his handling of the country’s affairs.
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All this indicates that China’s leader cannot deal constructively with Trump this week. “Xi enters these talks as a beleaguered figure seeking to shore up his domestic position,” Burton points out. “Fabricating friction with the West provides a convenient foreign distraction, allowing state media to divert public attention from internal instability and Xi’s faltering policy agendas.”
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In short, dialogue with China promises to be unproductive this week. If it is, we should stop talking and begin doing something effective.
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