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David Dodwell

The Trump administration has assured us that the long-awaited summit in Beijing between President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump will now be held on May 14 to 15.
Whether you believe the meeting will go ahead is up to you. Beijing has not confirmed it, but neither has it contradicted the White House. That is more than can be said for Tehran’s brutal response to White House claims that US-Iran peace negotiations are under way.
Even if we take the White House summit claim at face value, we then have to ask: why? Given the issues currently in contention between the United States and China and the doubts over whether even the most fleet-of-foot diplomacy can weasel some areas of agreement for a credible joint statement, there are many observers who see little upside in a meeting between the two leaders just now.
As political scientist Zhiqun Zhu wrote in ThinkChina, “How can China still welcome [Trump] as if nothing has happened? And how can China justify this visit to Global South countries that look up to China for global leadership?”
These questions are difficult to answer. Beijing’s views on US activities in Venezuela or Iran are fairly clear, as are its views on the Trump administration’s global tariff war and its efforts to block China’s exports and cut the country’s access to semiconductors and other technology needed for its technological progress.
China has also made clear its view on US efforts to hamper the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the rules-based multilateral cooperation it espouses. Only last weekend at the WTO Ministerial in Yaounde, Cameroon, China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao called on ministers to safeguard core “most favoured nation” trading rules, to “jointly send a firm message in upholding the multilateral trading system, and unequivocally oppose unilateralism and protectionism”.
He added: “Confrontation should give way to dialogue, [and] rules should be upheld against power politics.”

In reality, there are probably three good reasons for China to bite its tongue and once again lay out the red carpet for Trump and his wife Melania.
First is the fast-emerging view that Trump taking a wrecking ball to relations with friends and foes alike perhaps leaves China as the last adult standing. Numerous “middle powers” have lost trust in the US as a reliable trading partner and have – at times reluctantly – started moving closer to China.
Leaders visiting Beijing in the past year have included Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
As economist Adam Tooze noted in the Financial Times this week, “It is far easier for Beijing to bide its time and to wait out the crisis, allowing the US to destroy its own credibility, and Russia to become more and more dependent.”
Second, there is growing evidence that the Trump administration’s policies on trade and tariffs have failed to achieve their declared objectives and could have done more harm to Americans than the intended targets. As McKinsey’s report on the economic impacts of the second Trump administration makes clear, Trump’s trade and tariff policies are littered with unintended consequences. While US direct imports from China are sharply down, the policies have helped China lift exports to record levels.


Instead of relying on low-value consumer goods, as in the past, China has pivoted to become “the factory to the factories of the world”, supplying higher-value-added intermediate goods and capital equipment to countries across the Global South. This has, in turn, boosted its consumer goods exports to the US.
Instead of deglobalising the world economy and bringing manufacturing home to the US, Trump’s policies have instead reconfigured international trade. As Martin Wolf at the Financial Times noted, “[Trump’s] actions led neither to a cycle of retaliation against the US nor, crucially, to imitation of the aggressive US repudiation of WTO commitments and norms … The US, with just 14 per cent of world imports of goods, does not matter all that much.”
Instead of following the US’ unilateralist path, the rest of the world has opted to go on trading according to the WTO’s multilateral rules. As IMD’s Richard Baldwin wrote on LinkedIn, “Nations accounting for 75 per cent of world trade chose restraint over retaliation, resilience over vulnerability and new trade ties over fragmentation.” He talks of “the 75-percenters saving the system”.


Third, agreeing to a summit is a good way for Beijing to buy time to eliminate vulnerabilities and reduce dependence on the US. Patrick Cronin and Pinshan Lai at the Hudson Institute highlight Xi’s dedication to pursuing a national security strategy, “sanctions-proofing supply chains, accelerating industrial upgrading, shaping global standards and reinforcing cognitive influence”. They continue, “Beijing is not merely managing competition, it is methodically accumulating positional advantage.”
From this point of view, Beijing probably views the proposed May summit not as a self-standing event with needed deliverables, but as the first of four summits over the course of the year that will leave both governments in a state of continuous preparation, and preparations in their own right can help ensure stability in the relationship.
As Cronin and Lai forecast, “the optics will be grand and the words may be noteworthy, but the outcomes are unlikely to be earth-shattering.”


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Despite current tensions and dim prospects for meaningful progress, Beijing should still roll out the red carpet


Despite current tensions and dim prospects for meaningful progress, Beijing should still roll out the red carpet.


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Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


3 reasons Xi-Trump summit won’t be a waste of time for China

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Despite current tensions and dim prospects for meaningful progress, Beijing should still roll out the red carpet

Despite current tensions and dim prospects for meaningful progress, Beijing should still roll out the red carpet