Though the timing was delayed due to the Iran war, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met face-to-face this week in Beijing. The summit follows Trump and Xi’s last meeting last year during Trump’s tour of East Asia.
The meeting between the two leaders of could not come at a more critical time. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz to most shipping traffic has been yet another blow to the global economy following Trump’s effort to reshape global trade with his sweeping tariffs. Despite his administration’s earlier talk of attempting to decouple from China’s economy, Trump has found that doing so in practice is not only difficult but economically harmful given China’s ability to choke off exports of rare earth minerals that are critical to the global economy. As Raymond Kuo of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs recently observed, “Both sides have demonstrated that they have the ability to inflict pain on the other,” so the key economic issue is for them to return to “more stable economic relations”.
Since it is the U.S. that, along with Israel, launched the war against Iran and it is Trump’s tariffs that have caused the most global economic upheaval lately, it is understandable to focus on what the summit conveyed about Trump’s approach to China. But the summit could also be seen as a chance to determine whether China under Xi is seeking to be a constructive or disruptive force in global politics.