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Fan Chen

When the presidents of the United States and China meet in Washington, the world will be watching to see whether their two countries can make good on their agreement to work towards “constructive strategic stability”. In the second part of a series, Fan Chen looks at Beijing’s stronger position going into the high-stakes visit.
Beijing is poised to begin this week’s summit with Washington from a position of strength, bolstered by a flurry of recent diplomatic outreach.
Chinese confidence could be further reinforced by the United States’ latest push to make headway on conflicts in Ukraine and Iran – wars that observers say Washington may need Beijing’s cooperation to help resolve – even if a near-term truce remains unlikely.
Just weeks before his Washington trip, Chinese President Xi Jinping embarked on one of his most intense overseas itineraries, paying a state visit to Egypt after wrapping up the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Xi also attended the Brics summit in New Delhi last weekend, marking his first trip to India in seven years. In his address, the Chinese president took a veiled swipe at US policies and urged the bloc’s members to deepen cooperation in areas such as artificial intelligence.
Through a joint declaration, the two-day summit also forged a united front against US tariffs, sanctions and “America first” policies – all without naming Washington.

Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, noted that Beijing’s diplomatic blitz strengthened its hand ahead of the second US-China summit of the year.
“Xi’s visit to Egypt – a major Middle Eastern power – underscores China’s rising influence in the region,” he said.
“As Washington is currently entangled in conflict with Iran, this serves as a reminder to the US that it cannot overlook China’s regional clout when managing its bilateral ties with Beijing.”
Amid escalating conflicts in the Middle East, Xi used his first Cairo visit in a decade to urge the countries of the region to build a self-led security model and “take charge of their own future”.
Observers noted that the approach nudged the countries in the region away from Washington, without committing Beijing to a role as a replacement security guarantor.
US President Donald Trump said earlier this month that Xi would visit on September 24 and that they would have “a lot of good things to discuss”. Beijing has yet to confirm the trip, in line with its practice of leaving official travel announcements to the last minute.
Wu added that Beijing’s diplomatic whirlwind highlighted its focus on Asia and the Global South, showing its expanding reach as a global power and standing in sharp contrast to a US administration that has alienated traditional allies.
His view was echoed by Ali Wyne, International Crisis Group’s senior research and advocacy adviser for US-China relations.
As Trump undermined US alliances, Xi was building “China’s portfolio of transactional alignments”, Wyne said, although he added that Beijing was “unlikely to establish a coherent counterbalancing coalition”.
“Still, the Trump administration’s foreign policy enables Beijing to present itself as a more stabilising force than Washington.”




According to Wyne, while Xi would avoid upstaging or upbraiding his counterpart, he might enter the Washington summit far more confident than in May, buoyed by Trump prioritising their relationship over allegations of Chinese election interference and support for Iran.
Patricia Kim, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said Xi’s multiple tours showed that China had other important relationships and diplomatic options. They aimed to portray Beijing as “increasingly central to a more multipolar international order”, she said.
“The message Xi wants to project is that Beijing can engage Washington without making the US the centrepiece of its foreign policy.”
In Bishkek, Xi praised the SCO approach of peaceful coexistence “without alliance, confrontation or targeting any third party”, taking a veiled swipe at the US military alliance system.
Bloc leaders – representing Central Asian states, Iran, Russia, Pakistan, India and Belarus – condemned military strikes on Iran as international law violations and backed Tehran’s right to a peaceful nuclear programme, directly countering US demands for total nuclear abandonment.
Meanwhile, pressed by November’s midterm elections and the approaching summit with Beijing, Washington has also stepped up efforts to resolve the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran.
Following a phone call on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump said, though not for the first time, that he thought his Russian counterpart wanted to make a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
The call came after US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held more than three hours of “highly useful” talks with Putin on Saturday. Both sides have signalled optimism and that plans for next steps could be expected soon.
Witkoff and Kushner travelled to Kyiv on Sunday for talks aimed at resuming Russia-Ukraine negotiations – their first visit to the Ukrainian capital after numerous trips to Moscow since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
While no breakthrough was announced, Witkoff said he was “confident there would be a good resolution”.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian, European and US officials would meet to continue talks, while reiterating his call for a trilateral meeting involving Russia and the US.
Zelensky also said he expected the war with Russia to continue into the winter.
On Wednesday, Trump addressed the Middle Eastern front where the US has been deeply embroiled since February. The war with Iran would end immediately after the midterms, he said, and hinted that negotiations “could possibly happen”.
Surging oil prices and broader inflation from the US-Israel war in Iran have plunged Trump’s approval ratings to new lows, stoking Republican fears of what the midterms may bring.
Though neither conflict has a clear end in sight, analysts say that Washington might need China’s cooperation to resolve them, giving Beijing a stronger hand ahead of the Xi-Trump talks.
According to Zhu Junwei, director of Chinese think tank Horizon Insights, Trump – unable to resolve the conflict in Iran – is pursuing alternative wins in North Korea and Ukraine to project a “can’t stop winning” narrative in a bid to distract voters and boost his political prospects.
“None of these crises can be resolved quickly. If Trump wants quick, tangible wins to boost his midterm prospects, he is likely to need China’s help,” she said.
“Even if he approaches this by applying pressure, it fundamentally comes down to needing Beijing’s cooperation.”
Trump has repeatedly signalled a desire to revive personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, saying he expected to meet him later this year after scaling back last month’s US-South Korea military drill, widely seen as a conciliatory gesture.




On Thursday, the South China Morning Post reported exclusively that China was willing to broker a leaders’ meeting between Pyongyang and Washington and would support all credible efforts leading to resumed dialogue.
Zhu also noted that calming the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts – even if impossible overnight – “ultimately benefits Beijing, regardless of its impact on US-China rivalry, as it significantly improves China’s external environment and creates new opportunities”.
Sun Yun, director of the China programme at US think tank the Stimson Centre, echoed this view, saying that China could help the US resolve both conflicts and describing Beijing’s role as a potential bargaining chip in broader US-China talks.
However, both Sun and Wyne of the International Crisis Group noted that Beijing was not the main driver behind Trump’s pre-summit rush to resolve both conflicts.
“While the Trump administration would indeed have more diplomatic bandwidth were it to freeze the Russia-Ukraine war and reach a fresh ceasefire with Iran, it has not prioritised China policy nearly as much as many observers had anticipated when Trump retook office,” Wyne said.
Even though Putin might view Trump as a more favourable interlocutor than his predecessor Joe Biden, Moscow “is unlikely to weaken its relationship” with China for a fragile US truce under Trump, knowing American leadership was likely to revert to a hostile stance towards Moscow, he added.
Even without major deliverables, the summit could still prove useful if it maintained a cordial rapport between the leaders and sustained a “tactical thaw”, Wyne stressed.
According to Kim from Brookings, the leaders’ meeting was “unlikely to produce a significantly expanded bilateral agenda or result in a fundamental reset” of ties. Instead, the focus remained on extending the trade detente and sustaining leader-level diplomacy as the main buffer against further deterioration, she said.
Zhu noted that while Trump aimed to stabilise ties with China, an overall hawkish US bipartisan consensus meant there was “still a long way to go” towards achieving “constructive strategic stability” – the framework introduced at the Beijing summit in May.
“A single summit cannot resolve every issue; if this meeting yields partial economic and trade agreements and temporarily manages differences, it should be viewed as a success.”


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Chinese confidence could be boosted by US push to make progress on its war on Iran and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, experts say


Chinese confidence could be boosted by US push to make progress on its war on Iran and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, experts say.


Analysts tip a stronger hand for China ahead of Xi-Trump summit in Washington

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Chinese confidence could be boosted by US push to make progress on its war on Iran and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, experts say

Chinese confidence could be boosted by US push to make progress on its war on Iran and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, experts say