The photographs were arresting: US President Donald Trump and President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping strolling from the Temple of Heaven, two men whose countries’ rivalry defines the geopolitical moment.
The Star-Spangled Banner played, children cheered and a 21-gun salute rang out across Tiananmen Square as the two walked a red carpet on the plaza of the Great Hall of the People. Xi then quietly warned that if Taiwan were ‘handled poorly’, the two countries could end up in conflict – ‘an extremely dangerous situation’.
Critical response
The Beijing summit was both a tableau of managed calm and a window onto a perilous drift. Fareed Zakaria, no cheerleader for Trump foreign policy, allowed on CNN that Trump may have tapped ‘the right instincts’ for managing the US-China relationship – recognising that China’s economic, technological and military weight makes full-scale confrontation a formula for tearing apart the global economy. Elizabeth Economy, writing in the Financial Times, took a sharper view: the summit was ‘little more than a low-risk set of photo opportunities’, with each side telling the story it wanted to tell. Nicholas Burns, former US ambassador to China, threaded the needle, crediting the meeting’s modest commercial outcomes while sounding a clear alarm over Taiwan.
These three perspectives, taken together, point towards a single, sobering conclusion: the summit achieved a tenuous stabilisation of the bilateral relationship that benefits China structurally and leaves the US with unresolved vulnerabilities – most acutely on Taiwan.
‘Fairness and reciprocity’
The outcome heading the White House fact sheet – that the US and China agreed to ‘build a constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of fairness and reciprocity’ – sounds reassuring. The framework is an evolution of Xi’s long-sought ‘new type of major-power relationship’, a concept previous US administrations consistently refused to endorse.
The Trump team added the hedging qualifier ‘fairness and reciprocity’ – except the underlying architecture is one that Beijing has wanted for years: a framework that normalises Chinese power and creates obligations of mutual restraint.
A strategic stability initiative of the kind China envisions could become a ‘poison pill’, according to Ambassador Burns, potentially constraining the US’ ability to criticise China publicly or defend Taiwan without violating a framework both sides have endorsed.
Beijing, meanwhile, is under no illusion. China’s own analysts describe the dynamic not as a reset but a ‘calculated stalling tactic’ – time bought for China to continue derisking from US technology dependencies while using the period of surface stability to push back on further American efforts to contain it.
Ambiguity on Taiwan
The summit’s most dangerous legacy may not be what was agreed, but what was left dangling. Trump’s post-summit comments to Fox News amounted to a sustained equivocation on Taiwan – not a reversal of US policy officially – but something arguably more damaging: ambiguity.
Trump called the $24bn arms package a ‘very good negotiating chip’ and said he was ‘not looking for’ Taiwan independence. He declined to commit to the arms sale that the Taiwan Relations Act strongly supports.
Yet Xi’s opening gambit and stark warning on Taiwan at the summit appears to have registered, at least in Trump’s subsequent demeanour. The People’s Republic has now inserted Taiwan into the US domestic negotiating calculus in an unprecedented way.
This week brought fresh confirmation of the instability beneath the smiling surface. Trump stated his intention to speak with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, prompting Beijing to demand that Washington abide by the ‘common understanding’ reached at the summit. Following Trump’s Fox News comments, it was announced that the US was pausing the arms sale due to the Trump administration’s war with Iran.
Global business dealings
Meanwhile, the 17 corporate executives who travelled to Beijing returned with mixed results. Boeing announced a commitment for 200 aircraft. Nvidia’s H200 chip sales were cleared for select Chinese buyers. Citi won domestic banking approval. But Tesla’s Full Self-Driving hopes went unconfirmed, and much of the broader delegation – Apple, BlackRock, Goldman, Blackstone – came home with relationships shored up but no major new access secured.
Jamie Dimon’s observation at JP Morgan’s Shanghai conference – that China has become ‘more consistent’ in its dealings with other countries – captures a real shift in global business perception. As US credibility frays and traditional allies recalibrate, China is positioning itself as the stable pole of the international order. That positioning is partly marketing, partly real.
China has not stepped forward to fill the leadership vacuum it claims the US has created. Its foreign aid remains minimal, its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine continues and its maritime assertiveness is undiminished. The world, Economy argues, is confronting two superpowers that want the privileges of global leadership without the responsibilities – and most countries are concluding the answer is ‘none of the above’.
What the summit did not change was the deep institutional architecture of US-China competition. Tariffs, export controls, semiconductor restrictions and industrial policy enjoy strong bipartisan support. Washington’s goal in the sectors that define long-term power – artificial intelligence, quantum computing, critical minerals, biotechnology – is not accommodation but dominance.
The risk is not that the US softens its competitive posture at the structural level. It is that a transactional president, operating on instinct rather than doctrine, trades away the signalling clarity that allies and adversaries alike depend on – most especially on Taiwan.
A ‘constructive relationship of strategic stability’ that leaves Taiwan’s security status as a negotiating chip is stability for China. For the US and its Indo-Pacific partners, it is a fragile détente with a dangerous asterisk. The smiles at the Temple of Heaven were real. So was the warning that followed.
Marsha Vande Berg is Deputy Chair of the OMFIF Advisory Council and Chief Executive Officer of MVandeBerg Advisory. She writes ‘Context at Geostrategics’ coming on Substack.
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