Trump and Xi Meet in Beijing Summit Focused on Trade, Middle East, Taiwan

Donald Trump arrived in Beijing on Thursday morning to meet with Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People, a sprawling complex facing Tiananmen Square that has hosted state ceremonies for decades. Soldiers held enormous flags. A military band played the American national anthem. Children in bright uniforms waved flowers and shouted welcomes. Cannons fired in salute. It was the kind of pageantry reserved for moments when two nuclear powers want the world to see them getting along.

This was their first face-to-face meeting since October, when they had agreed in South Korea to pause their trade war. Now, with the summit scheduled through Friday, both leaders faced three interlocking problems: the commercial relationship between their countries, the war in the Middle East that had disrupted global oil markets, and Taiwan—the island that China claims and America has armed for decades, a wound that never quite closes.

Trump told Xi the relationship was "fantastic" and predicted it would be "better than ever." Xi spoke of unprecedented change sweeping the world, of international chaos, of what he called the "Thucydides Trap"—the historical pattern in which a rising power and a declining one inevitably collide. He posed a question: Could China and America break that cycle and build something new? He said they must be partners, not rivals. He said their common interests outweighed their differences. He said stability between them was a gift to the world.

But Trump had not come alone. He brought the chief executives of Tesla, Apple, Boeing, Nvidia, and BlackRock, among others. The presence of Nvidia's Jensen Huang was particularly noted—he had boarded Air Force One at the last minute in Alaska. The two superpowers were locked in a race to dominate artificial intelligence, and Nvidia made the chips that powered it. Trump had promised to ask Xi to open China's market so these "brilliant people" could work their magic. Experts predicted Beijing might agree to buy Boeing aircraft and American agricultural products—soybeans, meat—in exchange for easing trade restrictions.

The Middle East crisis hung over everything. For seventy-five days, the war had raged. Iran's strait—the Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil had once flowed—was now a chokepoint. Both economies were bleeding. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sitting beside Trump in Beijing, told Fox News that the administration would warn China that "economies are falling apart because of this crisis" and that Chinese consumers would buy fewer American products as a result. He said they hoped to convince China to pressure Iran to stop what it was doing in the Persian Gulf. Trump, by contrast, downplayed the disagreement. He seemed less interested in the war than in the deals.

Taiwan remained the third rail. For decades it had defined the tension between Washington and Beijing. China claimed the island. America sold it weapons. Neither side wanted to move first. Before the summit, White House officials had already dismissed speculation that Trump might shift American policy on Taiwan during this visit. The issue would come up. It always did. But no one expected a breakthrough.

That evening, Trump would tour the Temple of Heaven, a complex of imperial buildings built for Confucian state rituals. He would attend a state banquet. On Friday, he and Xi would share a working lunch before the American delegation flew home. The summit was designed to project harmony, to suggest that the world's two largest economies could manage their rivalry without destroying each other. Whether the deals would follow, whether the pressure on Iran would work, whether Taiwan would remain a frozen conflict or become something worse—those answers would come later, if they came at all.