Trump Welcomes Xi to Washington as US-China Truce Hangs in the Balance
Trump hosts Xi in Washington to shore up a fragile US-China truce, with analysts expecting few concrete outcomes beyond an extension of the standoff.
President Donald Trump is hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on Thursday, four months after the two leaders met in Beijing, as both sides seek to keep a fragile truce from unravelling.
The visit is Xi's first to Washington in a decade. It follows a fierce trade war last year that ended in May with an agreement to keep the relationship stable, though that truce has not curbed the broader competition between the two countries.
Tensions continue to build across technology, national security and the global contest for influence, even as the two leaders meet.
Trump struck an upbeat note ahead of the talks, saying the two countries were "doing very well" and that he and Xi shared a good relationship.
Analysts expect the summit to yield limited concrete results. Bonny Lin, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the meeting was intended to show that both leaders are trying to manage the relationship and prevent competition below the leadership level from spiralling out of control.
Jonathan Czin, a former CIA China expert now at the Brookings Institution, said few deliverables were likely, with the focus instead falling on the personal rapport between the two presidents. He described Xi's approach as seeking time, space and relief from US pressure at the lowest possible cost, adding that a roughly 36-hour visit to Washington was a small price for Beijing to pay.
Czin said he expected the truce to be extended because both sides have an interest in doing so, but that the key question was how long it would last.
Artificial intelligence is among the areas where the two countries remain far apart. Trump has argued that whoever leads in AI will win overall, while Lin noted that the United States remains ahead in many respects and China is catching up, shaping the differing starting points of each side. Czin said he had low expectations for progress on the issue, pointing to limited focus from the Trump administration and a view in Beijing that AI is not yet an existential threat.
Other points of friction include regional security. Czin said any request made of China hands Beijing leverage, and that China would seek concessions from the United States rather than act out of goodwill.
On Taiwan, the wire material included archive footage of US and Taiwanese flags at a march, reflecting the sensitivity of the issue without further detail.
Czin said success for both sides would mean preserving the status quo, with each able to claim that tensions are not escalating again.