Warmth at the Top

By Yun Sun, Senior Fellow and Director, China Program

As analysts go through the tea leaves and try to discern the significant deliverables from the Trump-Xi summit, many have drawn the conclusion that substance was lacking despite all the high-profile activities and high orders of diplomatic protocol.

There will be many different interpretations on the significance, or the lack thereof, of the Trump-Xi summit. Symbolism and formality are no trivial matters for China, especially for the country’s top leader, who decides the direction, temperature, and momentum for bilateral relations with the U.S. Without a warm, positive interaction at the top level, nothing at the working level will move smoothly, or move at all. It doesn’t mean that everything will move smoothly if there a warm feeling at the top, but Xi’s instruction to work constructively with the U.S. is the precondition for the Chinese bureaucracy to act. In this sense, the grand diplomatic protocol that the U.S. extended, and which Xi welcomed, prepares the Chinese system to move more constructively down the road.  

And we have seen cooperation on the working level from China since the Beijing summit this year. Since May, China has taken some unprecedented steps and positive actions in bilateral relations, including law enforcement cooperation on fentanyl, cyber scams, and the deportation of American criminals who had been in Chinese custody for years, among other issues. China has responded positively to more military-to-military communications, including by sending the commander of Eastern Theater Command to the CHODs Conference on August 31 and having him meet with the head of Pacific Command, Admiral Paparo. In his White House remarks, Xi referred to regular military-to-military dialogue channels and crisis communication and prevention mechanisms — issues that the U.S. had been pushing for years to no avail. One could argue that these are things China was supposed to deliver but refused to begin with. But the fact that China is finally moving on these fronts is a positive development, which would not have been possible without the new tone of bilateral relations.

Time Is Ticking on Critical Minerals

By Pam Kennedy, Fellow and Deputy Director, China Program

The Trump-Xi summit in Washington came a few weeks before another key date in US-China relations, the November 10 expiration of the Busan trade truce. One of the first items accomplished during the summit was a two-month extension of the truce. For the United States’ access to Chinese-produced critical minerals, this extension is important—but only if trade talks can lead to a more permanent deal.

At Busan in October 2025, China agreed to pause some of the export restrictions on certain critical minerals that it had imposed earlier that month as part of the tit-for-tat trade war with the United States. China has the market cornered as the largest — and in some case the sole — source for the 17 rare earths (91% of refining) and numerous critical minerals. For U.S. industry, China’s expanding list of restrictions on critical and rare earth mineral exports, as well as the technologies for refining these minerals, has significant implications for supply chain security and resilience. U.S. companies cannot easily or fully replace Chinese-produced minerals in their supply chains.

The Trump administration has an ambitious goal to ramp up production of critical minerals in the United States. A July 2026 executive order is pushing U.S. defense companies to shift their critical mineral supply chains onshore or to allies by January 2027. Yet the road to meeting U.S. demand without Chinese producers in the supply chains will be much longer than two months. The U.S. investment in increasing domestic capacity simply needs more time, measured in years, not months.

While the Trump-Xi summit bought time on the critical mineral export issue, a longer-term deal will be necessary to bring stability to trade relations. But China will still retain the ability to turn export restrictions on and off, so the Trump administration will need to walk a fine line, ensuring that U.S. industry has access to Chinese critical minerals while building domestic capacity over time.

A Realist Relationship?

By Julian Mueller-Kaler, Senior Fellow and Director, Strategic Foresight Hub

For all the pageantry surrounding Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, the most consequential development may be less tangible: The United States appears to be moving toward a more realist relationship with China.

That does not mean the competition is disappearing. Far from it. The two countries remain divided over Taiwan, trade, critical minerals, China’s relationships with Iran and Russia, and, perhaps most consequentially, artificial intelligence. The summit has not resolved any of these questions, and particularly on AI, the absence of meaningful guardrails remains striking. Furthermore, the extension of the existing trade truce also merely postpones fundamental disagreements over tariffs, technology restrictions, Chinese purchases, and rare-earth supplies.

Yet managing competition rather than pretending it can be decisively won is itself significant. The Biden administration increasingly framed the US-China relationship through the language of strategic competition, democratic versus authoritarian systems, technological containment, and coalition-building designed to constrain Beijing. The second Trump Administration’s approach is more transactional, less ideological, and often inconsistent. But beneath that unpredictability lies an emerging recognition of a basic geopolitical reality: China is not going away, cannot simply be contained, and has sufficient economic and technological power to impose costs of its own.

That marks an important departure from Trump’s previous approach as well. His first administration’s unilateral trade war often treated economic pressure as an end in itself. Trump 2.0 appears more willing to use pressure as leverage toward negotiated coexistence. Such an approach is closer to the realism Mat Burrows and I argued for five years ago. Realism does not require acquiescing to Chinese demands, abandoning American allies, or sacrificing democratic values. It means distinguishing between the desirable and the possible, protecting core interests while acknowledging those of other great powers, and creating mechanisms that prevent competition from escalating into conflict.

The critical test now is AI. Washington and Beijing have every reason to compete aggressively for technological advantage. They have an equally compelling interest in preventing that competition from producing catastrophic instability. A genuinely realist China policy must therefore do two things simultaneously: compete where interests diverge and cooperate where mutual vulnerability demands it. The United States may finally be moving in that direction. 

“Denuclearization” Conspicuously Absent From Trump-Xi Summit Readouts

By Rachel Minyoung Lee, Senior Fellow, 38 North

The September 25 U.S. fact sheet on the Trump-Xi summit conspicuously left out the North Korean nuclear issue, noting only that the two leaders had “discussed on-going global concerns, including Russia, North Korea, and Iran.” By contrast, the very next clause stated: “They agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” This marked a significant change from the May U.S. fact sheet, which said Presidents Trump and Xi had “confirmed their shared goal to denuclearize North Korea.” The latest U.S. announcement was notably closer to the Chinese readout, which said only that the two leaders “exchanged views on … the Korean Peninsula.” A subsequent Chinese list of eight summit “deliverables and understandings” likewise recorded agreement on Iran’s nuclear program but made no mention of North Korea.

The White House’s apparent retreat from its May language comes amid President Trump’s renewed interest in meeting Kim Jong Un, possibly around the November APEC summit in China. Beijing, meanwhile, has increasingly faced pressure from Pyongyang on the issue despite publicly avoiding denuclearization terminology since summer 2023. Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui’s unusually forceful statement on North Korea’s nuclear status, issued on the eve of the Trump-Xi summit, appeared aimed at least in part at Beijing. For different reasons, Washington and Beijing thus seem to share an interest in not publicly highlighting a topic that Pyongyang regards as anathema.

Pyongyang is unlikely to have missed this shift, but it falls well short of the conditions Kim has laid out for returning to talks. At February’s Party Congress, North Korea raised its already high bar for engagement by demanding U.S. recognition of its nuclear status and withdrawal of its “hostile policy.” Choe’s pronouncement seemed to go beyond Pyongyang’s customary assertion that its nuclear status is permanent, declaring it “inevitable to reorganize and fix the geopolitical structure centered on the DPRK with nukes.” What that would entail for the regional order, and for any future US-North Korea diplomacy, remains unclear and warrants close monitoring.

Relieved but Not Resting Easy: South Korea’s View of the Trump-Xi Meeting

By James Kim, Director, Korea Program

The much anticipated meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping was closely watched in South Korea, especially since this meeting came after an encounter between President Trump and President Lee Jae Myung on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. There is a lot at stake for South Korea when it comes to China and the U.S. given that these two countries accounted for approximately 35% of South Korea’s overall trade in 2025. More tension between China and the U.S. would mean the reimposition of many trade-related restrictions, such as export controls and sanctions, which would challenge South Korea’s own manufacturing and trade with both countries.

Take, for instance, this data which shows that 80% or more of South Korea’s supply in 1,850 items in the first nine months of 2021 came from China. Korean battery producers also depend on China for over 97% of natural graphite and 82% of lithium hydroxide, which are precursors for anodes and cathodes. Magnesium is almost entirely sourced from China, which also produces 90% of global supply. On the other side of this trade, 80% of South Korean exports to China are intermediate goods for Chinese firms. In short, both imports and exports from/to South Korea to/from China would be impacted by any changes to the trade and investment environment. To that extent, the recent extension of trade truce declared by both sides will go a long way towards alleviating concerns for South Korean firms in the near term. There were some additional encouraging developments on trade that included both sides reaching an agreement on favorable tariff treatment for $30 billion of non-sensitive goods and China agreeing to import 10 million metric tons of coal in 2027 and 2028. Both leaders also discussed Russia, North Korea, and Iran, which is a welcome development especially for South Korea since all three countries directly impact South Korea’s national security and economic interests. Finally, the establishment of the US-China Super Intelligence (SI) Dialogue and a communication channel for SI demonstrates acknowledgement and mutual recognition of a problem that was front-and-center at UNGA.

Despite these developments, however, South Korea will still find it difficult to rest easy given that the temporary trade truce is extended only until January 10, and similar meetings have not resulted in a fundamental change in the relationship between these two great powers. In short, any dialogue and engagement between these two leaders will be welcomed by Seoul, but South Korea will continue to maintain close watch over this relationship moving forward. 

Trade-offs: Prioritizing Dialogue over Deliverables

By James Siebens, Fellow, Strategic Foresight Hub

Last week’s summit between President Trump and Chairman Xi did not resolve the fundamental sources of tension in the bilateral relationship, which are largely structural factors of geopolitics and especially military power. Both leaders view trade through the lens of developing international power, so it is not surprising that the summit was centered on advancing priority issues like the new bilateral boards of trade and investment. Previously, both presidents were using tariffs and other restrictions on international trade as a form of negotiation, affecting billions of people’s livelihoods and billions of dollars in lost or mishandled revenues. Despite the likelihood that tariffs have reduced overall U.S. imports from China, the U.S. remains China’s largest bilateral trading partner and one of the largest destinations for China’s overseas investment. Thankfully, the two leaders have evidently agreed that this trade war is inefficient and even counterproductive, and have extended the “truce” in the trade war until at least January 2027. 

While the meeting produced few concrete results, the fact that the meeting took place at all should not be taken for granted, especially given the context of ongoing proxy wars and the rising risk of future conflict. Further, the fact that working-level negotiations are set to continue beyond the summit should also be read as an indication that diplomacy at the leadership level at least sustained the delicate diplomatic engagement, which could easily have been derailed by an ill-considered remark.  

When I was in Beijing this past May for a series of Track 2 discussions before and after the last summit, Chinese interlocutors expressed a number of goals — perhaps suggestions and perhaps preconditions — to facilitate the success of this most recent summit. Among these, they hoped that the US-China trade war would be resolved, and that the war with Iran, the domination of Venezuela, and the campaign of maximum pressure against Cuba would all be over before the two leaders met again. Some in China may yet suspect that the U.S. has deliberately attempted to harm Chinese economic and geopolitical interests by overthrowing the government of Venezuela, which was previously one of China’s major oil suppliers and a key recipient of China’s loans; waging war against Iran, including a naval blockade that has significantly disrupted global energy supplies/markets, and consequently driven up the prices that China (and others) must pay on the international market; and targeting Cuba, a longstanding friend of China’s, with severe military and economic pressure. None of these goals were achieved, and yet the meeting went forward anyway. 

The summit might be viewed as successful, then, to the extent that President Trump’s hospitality facilitated clear and candid exchange to address any lingering misunderstandings that the leaders may have about their countries’ bilateral relations, including the major irritants just mentioned. If Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi still agree that constructive strategic stability is their shared understanding and mutual assurance, it is essential for them to sit together and clarify their views and respective “red lines.” Both countries should understand “strategic stability” to imply a shared acknowledgment that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and neither can a war between China and the United States of America. 

China’s Position on Multilateralism

By Sam Parmer, Research Associate, China Program

On Saturday, Xi Jinping wrapped up his high-profile Washington summit and headed home to Beijing. Meanwhile, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng took the floor of the UN General Assembly to make the case for Xi’s Global Governance Initiative — a vision of state-to-state relations predicated on multilateralism, sovereign equality, and the centrality of the UN. Xi himself has not addressed the General Assembly in-person since 2015, pitching his multilateral program at forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICs summits instead.

Xi’s absence from the UN General Assembly’s High-Level week, which brings heads of state from around the world to New York to discuss global problems and affirm their commitments to multilateralism, draws attention to the gap between China’s rhetorical and actual investment in the UN system. China does make substantial contributions to UN Peacekeeping missions and is working to increase its representation among UN staff. Xi’s frequent meetings with Secretary-General António Guterres also provide meaningful symbolic support at a time when the U.S. has cut multilateral contributions by over $1 billion and touts its resurgent unilateralism. But China has been slow to pay its UN dues, and it has yet to seriously commit to Security Council reform. China has also gummed up the works at international standards setting bodies and the UN’s NGO committee, hampering effective multilateral governance to advance its narrow national interests.

An in-person appearance at the UN General Assembly would lend weight to Xi’s rhetorical commitment to the institution. His absence from the slate of world leaders speaking in New York, despite already having traveled to the East Coast, leaves room for doubt.

Pomp and Circumstance

By Nick Hawkins, Research Associate, China Program

This summit was characterized more by pageantry and ceremony than tangible outcomes. While many in the United States lamented the summit’s symbolism as outweighing its substance, Xi’s reception appears to have been received well by the Chinese side. The focus on pomp and circumstance effectively punted key bilateral issues but contributed to maintaining stability and paving the way for further meetings later this year.

China is notoriously particular about diplomatic protocol and ceremony, and a wide range of Chinese stakeholders seemed pleased by the arrangements for Xi’s Washington visit. Chinese state media noted the high-level U.S. reception and the rarity of a U.S. president meeting a foreign leader at the airport. Prominent academics suggested the reception protocol exceeded what Trump received in Beijing in May and said informal activities promote mutual trust and understanding. Other observers picked through — and in some cases overanalyzed — every detail of the visit.

Most notably, at the conclusion of tea at the White House on September 25, Xi himself praised Trump’s thoughtful and detailed arrangements just before welcoming Trump and the first lady to visit China for the APEC Summit in November. Trump immediately said he would and later claimed that Xi would attend the G20 summit in Florida in December as well, though both sides’ official statements said they “intend” to attend each other’s summit.

While this summit fell short in substance, the pageantry has been sufficient to advance the expectation of meetings later this year. It will be difficult to achieve much before the APEC Summit, but meeting four times in 2026 would be significant in itself, especially amid Xi’s declining international travel and both leaders’ domestic issues. However, at some point, the two will need to more effectively address trade issues and turn cooperative rhetoric into action.

Cultural Exchange Helps Establish Firm Floor on US-China Relationship

By Evan Cooper, Research Analyst, Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program

Chinese president Xi Jinping’s summit with President Trump in Washington featured more use of cultural diplomacy, building off the precedent set at the summit earlier this year in Beijing. While some in Washington bemoan a lack of progress on policy, the symbolic exchanges are helping to stabilize the relationship between the two powers and allow greater public acceptance of cooperation.

During his visit to Washington, President Xi engaged in the tried and tested “panda diplomacy,” announcing that two giant pandas would be sent from China to Atlanta’s zoo as “envoys of friendship.” The first use of this form of diplomacy came in 1972, following a summit in Beijing in which First Lady Patricia Nixon expressed her appreciation for pandas, which led Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to gift a pair to the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington. As in 1972, when the Nixon administration was pursuing an opening of China to U.S. trade and attempting to curb inflation, the Trump administration is today hoping to steady the trading relationship and obtain economic relief from the costly trade war. Xi’s announcement signals a willingness to further ease tensions and helps to reframe the relationship as friendly, which can expand public acceptance of a less conflictual relationship.

The Chinese delegation’s announcement that it would accept 100,000 young Americans over the course of the next five years was another notable sign of an intention to reduce tensions. It followed President Trump’s pledge last year that the United States would accept 600,000 Chinese students. While educational exchange does not preclude conflict between the two countries, it does build ties that provide greater cultural understanding and could produce favorable policies and economic benefits.  

It is also notable how President Trump emulated Xi’s sharing of Chinese history while celebrating elements of American culture during the Beijing summit. President Trump took Xi on a tour of the National Archives, celebrating American history while remarking that Chinese official history stretches back far further. While Xi had used American-inspired food to signal ties during the Beijing summit, Trump hosted Xi and his wife for tea at the White House, further demonstrating a respect for Chinese culture.

While the Washington summit was critiqued by some as largely symbolic, these representational actions are consequential. They signal respect between the two leaders and countries, which is requisite for sustained cooperation. Diplomacy often requires slow and studied building of relationships in order to have longer term breakthroughs. The White House readout from the summit showed the two powers reducing tensions on trade, cooperating on counter-narcotics, and partnering on addressing threats from artificial intelligence. At the end of the summit, Xi invited Trump back to China for the APEC meeting later this year, which Trump accepted, while Xi plans to return to the United States for the G20 summit in December. The increased cooperation and regularized interactions between the leaders are rooted in their perceptions of shared interests and public acceptance of their working relationship. Cultural diplomacy has proven a critical tool for obtaining both in the US-China relationship.

After the Summit, Critical Questions Remain About Taiwan 

By Michael Cunningham, Senior Fellow, China Program

Xi’s trip to Washington revived familiar speculation about whether Trump would make a concession over Taiwan. That did not appear to happen, but Trump’s words and actions after the summit could have greater impact than what he said when Xi was in the room. 

Of particular importance will be how Trump speaks about Taiwan in the days ahead and what he decides to do with a stalled $14 billion arms package awaiting his approval. 

When Trump visited Beijing in May, he seemed to navigate Xi’s pressure over Taiwan well during the summit. It was only after he departed that his comments to media raised questions about his commitment to longstanding U.S. support for Taiwan. So far, he has avoided similar gaffes this time around, telling media only that he and Xi “didn’t talk about [Taiwan] too much.” His ambassador to China, David Perdue, further clarified that “we’re not changing our position” on the island. But media will surely continue to press Trump on the issue, and how he responds will influence how observers perceive his policy. 

As for the arms package, Trump is hardly the first U.S. president to delay a sale amid diplomatic efforts with Beijing. Furthermore, Trump has already approved a higher volume of arms transfers to Taiwan during his two terms than any previous president, and most analysts expect him to eventually approve this package. 

So far, Beijing seems to have convinced Trump to defer approval by threatening to cancel summits if he allows the sale to go through. With two additional summits planned for November and December, there is a high likelihood that Trump will not approve this sale until early 2027. 

However, Trump faces increasing pressure from Congress and other quarters to approve the sale, and such a move cannot be ruled out in the weeks ahead. Approving the package would complicate Trump’s engagement with Beijing and likely jeopardize the year’s two remaining summits. But the president is unpredictable, and he could wind up concluding that sending a strong message of support for Taiwan is a higher political priority than holding a third and fourth summit in 2026.