Last week’s three-day Xi-Trump summit was a fine example of China’s head-of-state diplomacy (元首外交) – the “anchor” of its foreign policy meant as a stabilising force to provide certainty and stability to a turbulent global landscape.
The visit included a formal nearly three-hour meeting between the two heads of state and their delegations at the Great Hall of the People and a welcome banquet addressed by both and a Chinese philosophy-laden visit to the Temple of Heaven.
Moreover, the presidents of the world’s two most powerful countries “walked and talked” while touring the Zhongnanhai (“Central and Southern Lakes”) leadership compound, a rare occasion for visiting heads of state or government such as Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama.
For the Chinese leadership, an invitation to Zhongnanhai is used to signal strategic intimacy, a kind of “gold standard” reserved for top-tier strategic partners or high-stakes diplomatic resets.
Well, that’s what happened on Friday, the last day of Trump’s state visit.
I had the honour and pleasure to enter Zhongnanhai twice as a member of a Macau media delegation, first with Macau’s last Portuguese governor, Gen. Vasco Rocha Vieira, in the early 1990s and later with the Macau Special Administrative Region’s first chief executive, Edmund Ho Hau Wah, at the beginning of this century.
The two-lake compound is both serene and bucolic – the right place for the nation’s leaders to work and rest.
Xinhua pointed out that Xi and Trump held a “private” meeting at Zhongnanhai where the two heads of states “walked and talked”. * The national newswire’s choice of words reminded me of the idiom “talking the talk and walking the walk” used to describe a person who not only says the right things but also follows through with consistent actions. By adhering to this adage, Trump could certainly boost his image.
According to Xinhua, during the stroll around the park-like compound, Xi classified Trump’s visit as a historic and landmark one. He also said that the two sides had set the new vision of a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability.
The concept of a “constructive relationship of strategic stability” is a relatively new framework in Chinese diplomacy. It has gained significant traction during this year’s high-level summits. It represents an evolution from the Cold War definition of “strategic stability” which was focused on nuclear deterrence.
Xinhua quoted Xi as telling Trump during the stroll that “we have reached important common understandings on maintaining stable economic and trade ties, expanding practical cooperation in various fields, and properly addressing each other’s concerns”.
Xi, who has led China for over 13 years, also said that Trump’s visit, his second visit as US president to the country in nearly nine years, “has been conducive to enhancing mutual understanding, deepening mutual trust and improving the well-being of the two peoples”.
No doubt, US-China ties are the world’s most important bilateral relationship as they impact virtually everything else, directly or implicitly, that’s happening on our planet on the political, economic, cultural and scientific front. Both are the world’s top two economies and, something that I find extremely important for their own and the whole world’s future, they are the undisputed leaders in artificial intelligence (AI).
AI is, I am convinced, human intelligence’s most important invention ever. It is the most impactful industrial revolution that we humans have been able to pull off – and we are just at the very beginning of it.
Countries at the forefront of AI will determine our future in basically anything that I can think of – and that’s why it is my firm belief that China and the US will continue to lead the world for a long time to come. AI is the greatest tool ever invented by humans, and I am optimistic that it will help us tackle lots of issues – on the medical and pharmaceutical development front in particular. As any tool invented by humanity, we have to ensure that it is used without hurting those that it is supposed to benefit – Primum non nocere (First, do no harm). I hope that China, the US and other AI-savvy players on the world stage will coordinate their efforts to ensure that AI will remain a safe tool (but let’s be realistic, any tool, even a simple one such as a hammer, can be misused by bunglers or miscreants).
Xi also underlined during their “walk the talk” in Zhongnanhai that China-US relations are not a zero-sum game: “While President Trump hopes to make America great again, I am dedicated to leading the Chinese people toward national rejuvenation”, stressing that the two countries can advance their respective development and revitalisation by strengthening cooperation.
According to what I gleaned from TV coverage of the Zhongnanhai stroll, Trump visibly enjoyed the rare chance of visiting the compound. He praised Xi as his “old, respected friend”. He warmly welcomed Xi to visit him in Washington, DC, in the autumn.
The visit also included a strong philosophical aspect when Xi personally gave Trump a guided tour of the 606-year-old Temple of Heaven in Beijing (the US, incidentally, will mark the 250th anniversary of its establishment on July 4 this year).
According to Xinhua, Xi explained to Trump that in ancient times, state rituals were held in the temple, where the country’s rulers prayed for national prosperity, social harmony, and favourable weather for good harvests.**
Xi also told Trump that the temple symbolises the traditional Chinese philosophy of “hé”*** (和) – meaning peace, harmony, and coexistence.
Xinhua emphasised that Xi once said that “peace, concord and harmony are ideas the Chinese nation has pursued and carried forward for more than 5,000 years; the Chinese nation does not carry aggressive or hegemonic traits in its genes”.
Opening his talks with Trump at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday, Xi raised the question of whether China and the United States can overcome the so-called Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major-country relations. Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BCE) was an Athenian historian and general.
The Thucydides Trap is a concept describing the structural stress that supposedly occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.
The relatively new term, which was created by US novelist Herman Wouk (1915-2019) in a lecture in 1980, was popularised by US political scientist Graham Allison (born 1940) of Harvard University decades later. Over the past decade it has been increasingly (mis)used by scholars and journalists to analyse China-US relations.**** It suggests that when these two forces collide, the result is an extreme predisposition toward war, even if both leaders desire peace.
Concluding the visit, veteran Foreign Minister Wang Yi bid farewell to Trump at the airport prior to his departure on Air Force One from Beijing on Friday afternoon.
Wang – one of the world’s most qualified and experienced foreign ministers, briefed the press on Friday about the China-US summit and the common understanding reached by the two sides.***** He answered seven questions raised by the press corps, among them, as one would expect, whether the Taiwan question came up during the summit.
Wang’s three-point answer was plain as day: “The Taiwan question was an important topic taken up at the summit”.
His three points regarding the island are:
“First, the Taiwan question is China’s internal affair. Realising complete reunification is an aspiration shared by all sons and daughters of the Chinese nation. It is also the unwavering, historic mission of the Communist Party of China (CPC)…We hope that the US side will strictly abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués, and honour its international obligations”.
Second, the Taiwan question is the most important issue between China and the US, one that affects the entire relationship. If it is handled properly, the overall relationship will be stable…Otherwise, the two countries would have clashes and even conflicts, and the entire relationship would be in great jeopardy…”.
Third, China and the US both agree on the vital importance of safeguarding cross-Strait peace and stability. To ensure this is the case, one must never indulge or support ‘Taiwan independence’, because ‘Taiwan independence” and cross-Strait peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water. Our impression coming out of this summit is that the US side understands China’s position, takes China’s concerns seriously, and, like the rest of the international community, does not agree with or accept Taiwan moving towards independence.”
I decided to quote at length Wang’s remarks on the island – which Japan returned to China in 1945 after five decades of colonial occupation – because of the Taiwan question’s vital importance not only to China-US ties but also to world peace.
Wang’s remarks came after Xi’s warning during his formal meeting with Trump that any missteps on the sensitive issue of Taiwan could push their two countries into “conflict”.
Well, Trump seems to have got the message. Speaking to US media while returning home on Friday he cautioned Taiwan’s pro-independence administration against declaring independence, suggesting they should not assume automatic US military support. He stated: “We’re not looking to have somebody say, ‘Let’s go independent because the United States is backing us’”.
When asked if the US would defend Taiwan if it were attacked, he told reporters in typical Trumpian style: “I don’t talk about that... There’s only one person that knows that, you know who it is? Me”.
Regarding Washington’s pending multi-billion-US-dollar weapons packages for Taiwan, Trump was non-committal, viewing them as deal-making leverage: “I haven’t approved it yet... I may do it, I may not do it” and referred to them as a “very good negotiating chip”.
Well, that’s vintage Trump.
During his press briefing, Wang underlined that the China-US relationship is one of the most important and complex bilateral relationships in the world, and he stressed that “it is anchored by presidential [head-of-state] engagements.
Wang also underlined that China has been working to promote Middle East peace talks, “and will continue to play its role for an early end to the conflict and restoration of peace in the Middle East”.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi visited Beijing on 6 May, roughly one week before Donald Trump’s state visit to China. The timing of the visit was widely seen as strategically significant. Reportedly, the discussions focused on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz for international shipping and briefings on Iran’s negotiations with the US.
On the Ukraine crisis, Wang said that both China and the US want to see an early end to the conflict, “and both have done a great deal to promote peace talks in their own ways”.
President Vladimir Putin is set to begin a two-day visit to China tomorrow. The timing of the trip is certainly noteworthy.
Asked by the media about his overall assessment of the China-US summit, Wang said that China-US relations have reached a new starting point and the two presidents’ in-depth discussions have produced fruitful outcomes. He noted that the two heads of state spent nearly nine hours together, during which they demonstrated “mutual respect, a commitment to peace, and a shared interest in pursuing cooperation”.
“The most important political understanding they reached was the agreement to build a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability”, Wang said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC)****** said in a statement that the two countries achieved positive outcomes in last week’s economic and trade negotiations, such as their decision to set up trade and investment councils to address their respective concerns in trade and investment cooperation.
On the aviation front, the statement said, “The two countries reached arrangements concerning China’s purchase of aircraft from the United States, as well as US guarantees for the supply of aircraft engines and related parts to China”.
This, once again, shows that economic and commercial relations between China and the US are, of course, a two-way street. Ideally, they benefit both sides as equally as this is possible in the constantly changing world of international trade.
Xi stated during the summit that China and the United States both stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. “We should be partners, not rivals”, he said. His appeal is one that commands agreement.
I expect other countries to pay close attention to the
“milestone” summit, as Xi described it, Tokyo and Brussels (as well as certain individual EU member states) in particular, and draw the right conclusions, such as accepting the fact that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and, consequently, an internal Chinese affair.
Regrettably, the folly of claiming that Taiwan is an “independent nation” is being supported by a “fan club” of misguided politicians in North America, the EU, Australia and Japan, among others.
Concerning China-US ties, Washington should endeavour to heed The Four Red Lines in China-US Relations “that must not be challenged”, announced by the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, shortly before Trump’s arrival in Beijing Wednesday: 01 The Taiwan Question; 02 Democracy and Human Rights; 03 Paths and Political Systems; and 04 China’s Development Right.
I am realistically optimistic that Sino-US ties have entered a new course, particularly for reasons of political and economic pragmatism. However, the desired partnership needs to be carefully cultivated by both sides; mutual respect and trust are the sine qua non.
– Harald Brüning
*Xi, Trump hold private meeting at Zhongnanhai in Beijing https://www.macaupostdaily.com/news/28223
** Xi cites philosophy of harmony to promote China-US coexistence https://www.macaupostdaily.com/news/28230
*** Its pronunciation is very unlike the one of the English pronoun “he”. Its Putonghua pronunciation is similar to the guttural “ch” in the Scottish word “loch” (“lake”) or the Spanish “j” in José. “Hé” is the core of the Confucian ideal “harmony without uniformity”, i.e., a state of balanced coexistence. It is also the first character in the word for “peace” (和平 – hépíng).
**** The concept is controversial among political scientists. I recommend reading US political scientist Joseph S. Nye, Jr.’s (1937-2025) “Understanding International Conflicts – An Introduction to Theory and History”, Third Edition, pages 11-19, about the controversy. Incidentally, the book’s “The Peloponnesian War” chapter quotes Karl Marx as observing that “men make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing”.
***** Briefing by Foreign Minister Wang Yi on China-US summit and common understandings https://www.macaupostdaily.com/news/28228
******China, US achieve positive outcomes in economic, trade consultations: MOC https://www.macaupostdaily.com/news/28229
