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Wang Xiangwei

The international media consensus following the Beijing summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump was predictable: grand on optics, short on substance. Dismissing it on those grounds misses the deeper story of how the summit marked a turning point in how Washington and Beijing manage their rivalry, particularly over Taiwan.
To understand where this relationship is going, a brief historical detour is in order. In April 2001, then US president George W. Bush departed from the long-held script of strategic ambiguity by declaring in a television interview that the United States would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself”.
It was an unusually blunt claim. During his first run for president, Bush had explicitly framed China as a “strategic competitor”, heralding what many expected to be years of bitter, confrontational ties.
That script was torn up just five months later by the September 11 terror attacks. As counterterrorism became the overriding priority, Washington began emphasising pragmatic cooperation with Beijing.
In this climate, Washington and Beijing worked together to restrain Taiwan’s then-leader Chen Shui-bian. Emboldened by Bush’s earlier support, Chen pushed a referendum on whether Taiwan should buy advanced missile defences if Beijing continued to aim missiles at the island.
After private warnings apparently failed, Bush publicly rebuked Chen in December 2003 alongside Premier Wen Jiabao in Washington, declaring that the US opposed “any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo”. Although US officials denied it publicly, Bush privately described Chen as a “troublemaker”.

This shift illustrates how US-China cooperation can reshape Taiwan’s political dynamics and how quickly Washington’s priorities can change. Fast forward to today, and the global balance of power is fundamentally transformed.
China is now the world’s second-largest economy, backed by rapid growth in its military capability. After more than a decade of intense, multi-front confrontation with Washington spanning trade, tech and geopolitics, China has emerged as a near-peer – a reality Trump has acknowledged by invoking the concept of the “G2”.
Furthermore, US foreign policy under Trump has undergone its own massive recalibration, turning inward and towards its own backyard in the western hemisphere. In many ways, the Beijing summit signalled the formal arrival of a bilateral paradigm that recognises China as a peer on the world stage, where both nations simultaneously compete and cooperate on an equal footing and where Taiwan remains the most important test case.
After the recent Beijing summit, Trump disclosed that he had discussed US arms sales to Taiwan “in great detail” with Xi, a move that upends Ronald Reagan’s 1982 pledge to Taipei that Washington would not consult Beijing on such sales. Trump went even further, describing the weapons pipeline as “a very good negotiating chip” and noting that he was holding current sales “in abeyance” because “it depends on China”.


Much has been made of Trump’s cabinet of China hawks, but even the administration’s most vocal foes of Beijing appear to be adjusting to the new script. A telling indicator of this shift can be found by comparing US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this year with his address last year. Hegseth delivered a fiery address last year focused on the threat from China, warning that Beijing was actively preparing to reunify with Taiwan by force by 2027 and urging Asian allies to unite against Chinese aggression.
His tone was markedly different this year. Hegseth did not mention Taiwan a single time during his speech on May 30. While he still noted “rightful alarm regarding China’s historic military build-up”, his approach reflected a new Pentagon mantra for regional stability: strong, quiet but clear. This new public line coincides with Washington and Beijing reopening critical military-to-military communication channels.
As the superpowers recalibrate, cross-strait politics are also shifting. In April, Xi met Cheng Li-wun – chairwoman of the Taiwanese opposition Kuomintang – in Beijing, the first meeting between the heads of their respective parties in nearly a decade. Cheng then embarked on a two-week tour of the US on June 1, aimed at reassuring American officials, academics and diaspora communities.
Cheng said she was “very willing” to meet Trump, a proposition that raised many eyebrows. Beijing’s foreign ministry has kept its public commentary on her US trip notably muted. This quietude underscores an unspoken reality: Beijing still views Washington’s influence as indispensable for cross-strait stability.


Some might argue that Cheng’s high-profile outreach to Beijing could strengthen the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and its leader William Lai Ching-te ahead of the local elections this November and the 2028 presidential race. Then again, history shows that when Washington and Beijing align, Taiwan’s political dynamics can change dramatically.
This new phase is not without risks. If Beijing interprets reduced American commitment as a green light for greater pressure on Taiwan, it could trigger dangerous miscalculations. Equally, China hawks in the US Congress and within parts of the Trump administration itself could push back hard against any perceived softening, limiting Trump’s room for manoeuvre.
This is the prism through which the Beijing summit should be understood. The real test lies not in whether Xi and Trump meet several more times this year but whether Washington and Beijing can work together for a durable de-escalation of tensions across the Taiwan Strait. The Bush-era saga reminds us that such cooperation, however unlikely, can still reshape outcomes.


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On Taiwan, the Trump-Xi summit offered more than optics

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U.S. President George W. Bush (L) and Chinese President Jiang Zemin give a joint press conference at the Western Guest House in Shanghai October 19, 2001. Bush praised China for its immediate support following the September 11 attacks. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

A woman reads the front-page news from the Beijing Youth Daily, 12 September 2001, covering the news of the 11 September terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Ordinary residents in China's capital said they were deeply shocked at the horrific terror attacks which struck the United States but also said US "arrogance" had contributed to events. AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. BROWN

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A demonstrator wearing a mask painted with the colours of the flag of East Turkestan attends a protest of supporters of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and Turkish nationalists to denounce China's treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims during a deadly riot in July 2009 in Urumqi, in front of the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, on July 5, 2018. Nearly 200 people died during a series of violent riots that broke out on July 5, 2009 over several days in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in northwestern China, between Uyghurs and Han people. / AFP PHOTO / OZAN KOSE

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The meeting between the Chinese and US presidents laid the groundwork for more predictable China-US relations, including on cross-strait issues


The meeting between the Chinese and US presidents laid the groundwork for more predictable China-US relations, including on cross-strait issues.


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On Taiwan, the Trump-Xi summit offered more than optics

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The meeting between the Chinese and US presidents laid the groundwork for more predictable China-US relations, including on cross-strait issues

The meeting between the Chinese and US presidents laid the groundwork for more predictable China-US relations, including on cross-strait issues