Xi, Trump and the diplomacy of dependency

CHINA

Thursday’s Beijing summit is expected to provide strategic stability and economic breathing space – even as both sides prepare for a more confrontational future.

WHEN Donald Trump meets Xi Jinping in Beijing next week there will be all the pageantry expected of a state visit between rival superpowers.

Behind the ceremony, however, Washington and Beijing will be trying to contain tensions in a relationship strained by tariffs, Taiwan and the battle for technological supremacy – while quietly preparing for a more confrontational future.

The summit, originally postponed during the Israel-US-Iran conflict, is expected to produce only limited agreements on trade and strategic cooperation.

Yet analysts believe its real significance lies elsewhere: not in resolving tensions between Washington and Beijing, but in slowing their deterioration long enough for both sides to consolidate their positions.

“This summit is less about solving US-China tensions than preventing them from spiralling while both sides consolidate and regroup,” Claire Brady, Sibylline’s Principal Analyst for North America, tells us.

The meeting comes ahead of the expiry in November of a one-year suspension on tariffs and export controls between the two countries.

Officials have spent weeks preparing discussions focused on agriculture, rare earth exports and trade stability.

But Brady says the summit also reflects a deeper reality confronting the Trump administration: the US economy remains heavily exposed to Chinese supply chains despite years of increasingly hawkish rhetoric toward Beijing.

“He talks a really big game,” she says of Trump.

“But what happens is he runs into the reality of the situation and how the economy reacts and how the private sector reacts to these things. Then he has to recalibrate and back up.”

That tension between political ambition and economic reality is likely to define the summit.

Recent concern in Washington has centred on China’s dominance in rare earth refining – materials essential to semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, precision-guided weapons and fighter aircraft including the F-35. Beijing controls most global processing capacity, leaving large sections of US manufacturing and defence production reliant on Chinese exports.

“That is exactly the vulnerability,” Brady says.

“The US needs exports from China to remake all these products. It’s something the US has to be very careful about because they can very quickly be on the back foot.”

Jonah Kaplan, Sibylline’s Principal Analyst for Asia-Pacific, says the issue helps explain why Trump’s second term has appeared more cautious toward China than many expected.

“A tactical retreat isn’t the same as a surrender,” Kaplan says. “Trump realised China has the cards about the rare earths.”

Kaplan says Washington remains committed to reducing reliance on Beijing, but rapid decoupling has forced a more pragmatic approach.

“It feels like the US needs China more,” he says.

“That’s a perception thing, but with the economy, with Iran and with rare earths, both sides know they still need some level of stability.”

Analysts expect the summit to produce narrow, largely transactional agreements: increased Chinese purchases of US agricultural goods, possible Boeing aircraft deals, and commitments to maintain current rare earth export arrangements.

But few expect any breakthrough on the core issues driving rivalry between the two powers.

Kaplan says Beijing increasingly views the island as the defining issue in the bilateral relationship and is expected to pressure Trump to soften US support for Taipei or delay further arms sales.

“China doesn’t want to compartmentalise the relationship,” he says. “For Beijing, Taiwan is the single most important issue.”

Even so, analysts believe Washington is unlikely to abandon its long-standing position of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan.

Brady says Trump’s transactional view of foreign policy has unsettled partners across the Asia-Pacific region.

“He believed all of the US’s allies were getting too much and the US wasn’t getting enough in return,” she says. “That has caused strain in every region of the globe.”

China, she argues, has sought to exploit that uncertainty.

“Every place the US has backed out from, China has seen a real opportunity in that,” Brady says. “When Trump abandoned USAID, that vacuum was immediately filled by China.”

Former diplomat and China specialist Charles Parton OBE argues that much of Washington’s China policy apparatus is currently being sidelined by Trump’s preference for personal diplomacy and headline-driven dealmaking.

“There are plenty of people in Washington who’ve got very serious thoughts about how to deal with China,” he says. “But they’re all holding back because they know the man at the top wants a good meeting with Xi Jinping and that’s the most important thing.”

Parton says Beijing is likely to view the current detente less as reconciliation than as an opportunity to consolidate its own long-term position.

“They want to continue the truce that’s existing at the moment,” he says. “They’ve shown they’ve got some pretty powerful weapons.”

Washington’s longer-term objective remains reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains and strategic technologies, particularly in sectors linked to defence, semiconductors and critical minerals.

He points to China’s push toward technological self-sufficiency while deepening Western reliance on Chinese supply chains.

“They want self-sufficiency in technology,” Parton says. “And increased dependence of the West on them.”

Behind the pageantry in Beijing, few believe the summit will fundamentally change the trajectory of US-China relations.

It is a relationship increasingly defined by strategic distrust, economic dependence and managed rivalry rather than genuine rapprochement.

“Both sides know there are issues that are just not going to be solved,” Brady says.

“They are so far apart on things like Taiwan, artificial intelligence and China’s manufacturing capacity that it’s almost no point discussing them beyond agreeing to keep talking.”

Rapid economic decoupling remains too costly for either side, but the relationship is still moving toward deeper strategic rivalry.

Brady argues the current detente is ultimately temporary, with both powers using the present period of stability to buy time and strengthen their own positions.

“They need each other in the moment,” she says, “to get to a point of strength in the long term where they can break apart.”

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