Chinese leader Xi Jinping wanted three things from his recent state visit to the United States. He left with everything he needed and more thanks to bargains with President Donald Trump that seemed to lock in a strategic stalemate in Beijing’s favor. Xi’s red carpet welcome at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland and Trump’s unprecedented decision to greet his plane on the tarmac became front-page news in Chinese state media, not for what they said about often quarrelsome ties with main rival America, but for the status and legitimacy they granted China’s most powerful leader in a generation.
It was important for Xi to tick the pageantry box for audiences back home, but he also sought to show the Beijing-led, emerging anti-Western bloc that he alone could tame the U.S. president with a combination of personal rapport and economic carrots and sticks, all while securing quiet acquiescence to China’s core interests, namely Taiwan. Trump walked away from the summit with his own material gains but had to work twice as hard to reverse the effects of his tariff war with China. While Trump turns his attention to next month’s midterms, Xi already has a plan to keep the U.S. leader sweet for the remainder of his presidency.
China has grown more confident under Xi’s leadership and believes it deserves to be treated as a coequal with the U.S. around the world. It already has the deference of much of the Global South, but it needed America’s recognition too. The White House gave Beijing the equal power status it craved and did so amid bipartisan pressure in the U.S. to counter China’s rise—economically, militarily and technologically.
That Trump got his administration’s China hawks to take a back seat, at least publicly, is no small win for Xi. China’s ruling elites believe the West’s liberal democratic order is in collective decline, mired in class inequality, social tension and financial decay. The U.S., despite its systemic advantages, is the poster child for this rot, according to Chinese academic literature.
The east is rising, Xi often says; China is catching up and time is on its side. A constructive relationship of "strategic stability" between the two countries, in which the two sides compete but avoid war, is just the type of stalemate that Beijing wants. Xi’s accord with Trump achieved that.
Xi has spent years warning America about the perils of standing in the way of its designs on Taiwan, the democratically governed island that China claims as its own. U.S. leaders including Trump have wavered publicly on the issue, but none has given in to Beijing’s demands to cut defense ties with Taipei. Neither the U.S. nor Chinese post-summit statements mentioned Taiwan, but China’s state media carried new words of caution from Xi to Trump.
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