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The relationship between Washington and Beijing is managed from the top. Since 2017 it has moved in a cycle: pressure builds, the two presidents meet, a truce is announced, and within months the measures resume. The meetings have prevented a break. They have not settled any of the disputes beneath them.
The wider rivalry and each side's full account: The United States and China.
President Trump went to Beijing in May and invited Xi Jinping to the United States; that visit is being prepared, with the treasury secretary meeting his Chinese counterpart in mid-September. Beijing has said it may cancel if Washington approves new arms sales to Taiwan. Xi has meanwhile hosted the Russian president, visited North Korea and travelled to India for the BRICS summit.
What a summit is for. Washington uses meetings to extract purchases and concessions under the threat of tariffs. Beijing uses them to obtain stability and to be seen as an equal. Each leaves saying it got what it came for.
The price. China raises Taiwan at every meeting and asks for restraint on arms sales and on wording. American presidents want farm purchases, market access, action on fentanyl. Whether Taiwan is being traded is the question that America's allies watch.
Whether truces hold. Every one since 2018 has been overtaken by a new list, ban or tariff within a year.
The president's personal dealing with Xi has produced what decades of dialogue did not: tariffs paused on American terms, purchases of American crops, cooperation on fentanyl. China responds to strength and to deadlines. Meeting is not yielding; the pressure stays on in between.
Relations between great powers need steady guidance from the top, mutual respect and no surprises. China keeps its commitments; it is the American side that signs a truce and then adds companies to blacklists or sells arms to Taiwan. Summits are useful when they bind the whole American government, not only the man in the room.
Washington's leaves out that the purchases promised in 2020 never arrived in full, that its negotiating position softened once China restricted rare earths, and that its allies learn of the results from the news.
Beijing's leaves out that it too acts between meetings, with export controls, sanctions on American firms and pressure on Taiwan, and that it receives Putin and Kim in the same weeks to show it has other options.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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