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Four Rounds of U.S.-China Summits: Who Won the First Bout? Foresight World Watcher’s 8 Tips

The first of this year’s expected four U.S.-China summit meetings revealed a relationship in which China could claim strategic steadiness while the United States sought to advertise narrower economic gains.

4連戦の米中首脳会談、第1戦で勝ったのはどちらか

Foresight · フォーサイト編集部 · 17 May 2026 · read the original in Japanese →

Four Rounds of U.S.-China Summits: Who Won the First Bout? Foresight World Watcher’s 8 Tips4連戦の米中首脳会談、第1戦で勝ったのはどちらか Foresight World Watcher's 8 Tips

The U.S.-China summit held on May 14 and 15: in the end, which side won? The United States and China are expected to hold four summit meetings this year, and this was the first. Next comes President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States in September, followed by the APEC summit and the G20 summit. We must assume, of course, that new developments will continue to emerge. Even so, this meeting brought the present configuration of relations between the two countries into sharp relief. This week, we bring you eight articles and essays related to the U.S.-China summit.

An editorial in the Global Times, under the umbrella of the People’s Daily, the organ of the Chinese Communist Party, positioned this summit as the starting point for “constructive and strategically stable China-U.S. relations” (details below). Its understanding was that the two sides had agreed to manage U.S.-China competition “within an appropriate scope” and to “stabilize” bilateral relations. The Trump administration, by contrast, emphasized economic agreements, such as “expanding U.S. companies’ access to the Chinese market and increasing Chinese investment in American industry.” China maintains that it secured gains in the long-term U.S.-China relationship; the United States claims it locked in economic benefits.

There was, of course, the important subject of Iran. On that point, however, while the American side said the two leaders shared the view that “Iran must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons,” the Chinese side went no further than to say that “solutions to issues including the Iranian nuclear problem should be reached through dialogue and consultation.” The Global Times editorial mentioned above does not even refer to Iran specifically. For China, given its relationship with Iran and domestic public opinion, a frontal criticism had to be avoided; for the moment, the two sides appear simply to have said what they wanted, and what they were able, to say.

At the same time, the economic agreements China granted to the United States, despite the presence of an illustrious roster of American executives at the Beijing dinner, lacked the concreteness one would expect of real fruit. President Trump’s claim that he would “make them buy 200 Boeing jets” is also seen by some as having been the minimum line envisioned by the American side.

In other words, the summit seems to have produced, for China at least, a result that brought no “disappointment.” President Trump posted on social media that “Chairman Xi said America may be in decline,” and interpreted this as a reference to the failures of the Biden administration. But “the East is rising and the West is declining” was already, by January 2021 at the latest, that is, at the very start of the Biden administration, a front-and-center element of the Xi leadership’s view of the international situation. It is a basic premise of the scenario in which the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” is to be achieved around 2050. To say this in front of the American president strikes me as a rather bold move.

Put another way, against a Trump administration desperate somehow to advertise results, China parried with its basic line intact. Last year’s tariff-based pressure campaign against China has become difficult to sustain, owing to China’s rare-earth export controls and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the tariffs were illegal; the result seems to reveal the strain on a Trump administration that has run up against a dead end.

That said, with the future of arms sales to Taiwan still unclear, some point to the possibility that President Trump may use the Taiwan issue as leverage in a deal to move negotiations in his favor. For the Xi leadership as well, the “200 Boeing aircraft” mentioned above is reportedly a figure that leaves room for bargaining, a margin for accepting a deal, that is, for encouraging a shift away from the strategy of ambiguity under which the United States does not make clear whether its military would become involved in a Taiwan contingency. Negotiations between the United States and China, one might say, are still continuing even after the summit.

“The Stakes of Trump vs. Xi” [Kurt M. Campbell / Foreign Affairs / May 11]

“Single combat, that is, ritualized one-on-one battle fought over grave interests, reaches back to antiquity. [...] The allure of single combat lies in the belief that large and complex military and political conflicts among civilizations or clans can be settled by an individual test of courage, insight, and legitimacy. This week, when U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Beijing, theirs will be a modern confrontation, yet one deeply colored by the hues of single combat.”

“Summits are often less historically consequential than advertised, but this meeting carries the atmosphere of a geopolitical heavyweight contest. With relations between the two countries at a crossroads, both leaders come to the negotiating table strikingly unconstrained by institutional limits, endowed with considerable personal discretion, and animated by a clear ambition to shape the next phase of U.S.-China relations. [...] Not since the historic 1972 meeting between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong have the leaders of the two countries held so much personal authority in determining the future of the bilateral relationship.”

It was Kurt Campbell, former U.S. deputy secretary of state and chairman and co-founder of The Asia Group, who expressed these hopes and anxieties before the U.S.-China summit began. He set them down in “The Stakes of Trump vs. Xi,” published on the website of Foreign Affairs on May 11.

“Ultimately, the significance of this meeting lies not in what agreements are reached, but in what signals are sent about public perceptions of the future of U.S.-China relations and of the standing of the two leaders. Here lies the central problem of the single-combat paradigm. In historical examples of single combat, the spectators almost always play a central role in the drama. Such confrontations are spectacles, performances directed at the crowd, and their outcomes are handed down as decisive.” How, then, did the result of this single combat appear in the eyes of the “spectators”?

“In Pageantry and Politics, China Summit Yields Xi’s Goal: Equal Footing with U.S.” [Isaac Arnsdorf, Michael Birnbaum, Michelle Ye Hee Lee / Washington Post / May 15]

“Trump entered the summit without setting out a clear strategy or objective. Although he indicated that he intended to discuss the confrontation with Iran over oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, he brushed aside the need for help from China, and departed without announcing firm commitments or progress on this issue or on several others.”

“In past summits, Trump has often skillfully used suspense and unpredictability to produce results. This time, however, during the public portions of Thursday’s [May 14] formal meeting and dinner, he confined himself to remarks that followed prepared scripts. Apart from a friendly interview with [U.S.] Fox News, he took no questions from reporters during his stay in China, and the White House released only a 158-word summary of Thursday’s meeting.”

…the essay continues at the source.

Foresight · read in Japanese