{"id":94380,"date":"2026-09-22T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=94380"},"modified":"2026-09-21T23:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T05:30:27","slug":"with-time-on-his-side-xi-seeks-to-extend-truce-with-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/with-time-on-his-side-xi-seeks-to-extend-truce-with-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"With time on his side, Xi seeks to extend truce with Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"With<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When China\u2019s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Trump meet in Washington this week, the two men will be operating on vastly different clocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American president is constrained by the immediate demands of a midterm election in November and a grinding war. The Chinese leader is gearing up for a norm-shattering fourth term as head of the ruling Communist Party, that will keep him in power for another five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Mr. Xi, the disparity in political realities gives him an edge in maintaining the truce that the two countries reached last year. A renewed trade fight would hit American consumers right before the election \u2014 a risk Mr. Trump can ill afford. China\u2019s economy is struggling too, but Mr. Xi answers to no electorate, giving him the patience to prolong the d\u00e9tente on his terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach of Xi\u2019s face-to-face encounters with Trump in his second term would only have reinforced Xi\u2019s prior conviction that Trump is leading an America that is dangerous but declining,\u201d said Jonathan Czin, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who previously worked at the C.I.A. analyzing Chinese politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Xi, who will sit down for talks with Mr. Trump on Thursday, may be wagering that leaning into Mr. Trump\u2019s preference for leader-to-leader diplomacy can insulate the relationship from flash points like the status of Taiwan, the self-governed island claimed by Beijing, and the competition to dominate artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keeping Mr. Trump at bay would give Mr. Xi breathing room to work on rejuvenating his listless economy, which has been weakened by a property crisis, high youth unemployment and excess production. It would give him time to rebuild the upper echelons of his military leadership, which he has hollowed out in a drive against corruption and disloyalty. And it would allow him to continue expanding his country\u2019s industrial, technological and military strength for a future showdown with the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysts say China benefits every time Mr. Trump\u2019s attention drifts elsewhere. By quarreling with traditional American allies or sinking deeper into the war in Iran, Mr. Trump is weakening his country’s global standing and pulling troops away from the Pacific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cXi would love to tell Trump, \u2018Go on, stay the course,\u2019\u201d said Suisheng Zhao, executive director of the China Center at the University of Denver. \u201cFor Xi, Trump represents a window of opportunity for China, so his priority is to buy more time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Emboldened Xi Heads to Washington<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since first meeting Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago more than nine years ago \u2014 a gathering best remembered for being when Mr. Xi learned about U.S. missile strikes on Syria while dining on what Mr. Trump described as the \u201cmost beautiful chocolate cake\u201d \u2014 Mr. Xi has had an extraordinary amount of time for a Chinese leader to size up his chief geopolitical rival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Early in Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, Mr. Xi was somewhat accommodating toward the American president. In 2018, his government agreed to purchase $200 billion in additional U.S. goods and services to offset a trade imbalance (though Beijing never fully honored that deal.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, Mr. Xi flipped the dynamic between the two superpowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with Mr. Trump\u2019s Liberation Day tariffs, Mr. Xi was the only world leader who refused to back down, choosing instead to match his opponent with one sky-high tariff after another. Mr. Xi then reached for his ace card by throttling exports of Chinese critical minerals, or rare earths, which companies globally need for modern technologies. Backed into a corner, the Trump administration called for a truce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a payoff years in the making: a rare instance in which Beijing not only withstood U.S. pressure but turned the tables and forced it to relent. Beijing, as a result, is emboldened today and sees itself more as an equal to Washington, analysts say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration \u201cthought they could use massive unilateral pressure to force China to make concessions. And that did not occur. In fact, the opposite did,\u201d said Scott Kennedy, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think now this is Xi Jinping\u2019s world and we\u2019re all living in it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Unstable Truce<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The superpowers should put limits on competition, Mr. Xi\u2019s argument goes, to avoid what he has warned could be a catastrophic clash. To this end, he has pushed a formula he calls \u201cconstructive strategic stability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, what this means is that Beijing wants Washington to accept boundaries on where it can challenge China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July, for example, when the U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposed a ban on Chinese-made humanoid robots, China\u2019s Ministry of Commerce invoked the phrase, demanding that Washington roll back the restrictions to preserve \u201cstrategic stability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American analysts view the slogan not as a serious effort at ironing out differences but as an attempt to get Washington to recognize China\u2019s clout and back off. China could apply it to any new U.S. restrictions on chip exports or arms sales to Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe truce is not constructive because little diplomatic infrastructure is being built,\u201d Mr. Czin of the Brookings Institution said. \u201cIt is tactical rather than strategic. And therefore it is inherently unstable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summitry is the Strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Xi appears to have calculated that the best way to manage the United States is to engage Mr. Trump in high-profile summits rich in optics but thin in substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The planned meeting on Thursday will be their third face-to-face in less than a year, a pace that could continue with talks in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, and at the Group of 20 summit in Miami in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHead-of-state diplomacy is the cornerstone of China-U.S. relations,\u201d China\u2019s top diplomat, Wang Yi, told Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a call on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But beyond extending the trade truce, the meetings have produced few breakthroughs. China may agree to more agricultural purchases this week, but expectations are low on issues like A.I. safety or China\u2019s trade imbalances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is by design, analysts say. Enticing Mr. Trump with the pageantry of summits he seems to relish lowers the risk that he may do something to derail relations \u2014 like greenlight a package of arms to Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tellingly, Mr. Trump has avoided criticizing China in the lead-up to the talks, even downplaying a Wall Street Journal report that China had supplied Iran with satellite images of a U.S. base in Jordan where three American troops were killed in an Iranian strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The summitry will also serve a domestic purpose for Mr. Xi by burnishing his image at home as a global statesman, during a moment of economic anxiety for many Chinese. It is important for Mr. Xi to demonstrate that he can manage Beijing\u2019s most critical bilateral relationship, analysts say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Trump is expected to greet Mr. Xi personally on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland when his plane lands on Wednesday. The White House will host Mr. Xi and Peng Liyuan, the first lady, for a state dinner, the first such banquet since King Charles III and Queen Camilla visited in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cXi wants to be seen by the Chinese public as a highly respected, influential and consequential world leader \u2014 and nothing can top being wined and dined at the White House,\u201d said Minxin Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who studies Chinese leadership politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cXi cannot afford to be distracted by a huge confrontation with the United States,\u201d Mr. Pei said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n