Confident in China’s power, Xi is ready to host an unpredictable Trump

President Donald Trump is set to visit China this week for the first time since 2017, when he received a red-carpet welcome from children waving American and Chinese flags, and Chinese officials hoping to negotiate with a leader they viewed as a pragmatic businessman and dealmaker.

This time, Trump will return to a Beijing that is a far more powerful, confident seat of global power than a decade ago — with a seasoned leader, Xi Jinping, who now understands Trump weaponizes unpredictability and holds no illusions about making lasting deals with the American leader. Instead, Xi wants to project China as a more reliable and responsible counterweight to U.S. volatility, U.S. and Chinese experts say.

“China’s comprehensive national power has grown significantly since 2017,” said William Klein, who arranged Trump’s visit at the time as a senior official at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

The summit, which was delayed from March because of the war in Iran, comes as the U.S. is mired in a Middle East conflict that shows no sign of winding down. Trump’s standing, domestically and worldwide, has also been weakened because of the public’s dissatisfaction with the war and the severe damage to the global economy.

As they meet this week, Xi and Trump, leaders of the world’s two biggest economies, are looking to stabilize the bilateral relationship after tit-for-tat export controls and sweeping U.S. sanctions on Chinese shipping firms and vessels suspected of doing business with the Iranian regime.

In the more than 15 months since Trump’s return to the White House, Xi has displayed confidence in going toe-to-toe with his American counterpart, refusing to blink in response to repeated tariff threats and instead negotiating what was largely viewed as a mutual de-escalation.

“China, after almost a decade of dealing with the U.S., has more experience and confidence now and is more clear-minded,” said Wang Huiyao, a former government policy adviser and president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank.

Fears are also growing among American allies and partners in the region that Xi may use the meeting this week to push for U.S. concessions on Taiwan and weaken Taiwan’s ability to defend itself in the case of a Chinese attack. The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but claims it as its territory.

The protracted war in Iran — and the U.S. shift of military assets to aid U.S.-Israeli efforts there — has already left Taiwan, Japan and other U.S. partners in the region worried about readiness and America’s capacity to intervene in case of a Chinese attack.

Chinese analysts say Xi hopes to convince Trump to go further than U.S. policy by “recognizing” Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is a part of China, rather than merely “acknowledging” it, noting that Trump has not confronted China over Taiwan compared to his predecessors.

When Trump visited Beijing in 2017, Xi was in the midst of a sensitive leadership transition as he consolidated power within the Chinese Communist Party and signaled his intent to dominate Chinese politics for decades to come.

Since then, Xi has solidified his position, securing an unprecedented third term in 2023 and investing heavily in technology, artificial intelligence, manufacturing and green energy — measures that have made the Chinese economy a more formidable rival to the United States.

These efforts have stoked a belief in Beijing that “China won’t make one-sided compromises this time, and has all the means to fight back if the U.S. bullies China again,” Wang said.

That willingness to fight back was on display late last year, when Beijing wielded its near-monopoly on rare earth minerals. In the face of mounting Trump tariffs, China retaliated with sweeping exports controls that tightened global access to critical raw materials required for advanced technology and set the stage for the trade truce in October.

The incident forced Beijing to stray from its foremost desire for stability in the bilateral relationship, even when it resulted in some punitive measures that China had to accept, according to former Trump administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

“In the second term, when Trump went so far, they sort of recalculated, recalibrated their approach to dealing with him,” one former official said. “It seems like they understood that if you just keep kind of appeasing Trump or keep acquiescing to his threats and demands, that it’s just going to be never ending.”

Xi’s refusal to bend showed the U.S. that China not only holds all the cards on rare earths but is willing to use that leverage, a second former official said.

“We cannot underestimate the rare earths chokehold that China has over us is playing into every calculation,” the second official said, describing the U.S. administration’s view. “They truly feel the potential impact. They’re asking themselves what would happen if China were to use that leverage again and what that would mean for the American economy.”

Then, in February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down most of the import taxes Trump had imposed, including a 145 percent levy on Chinese imports — delivering another win to Beijing.

In the latest sign of defiance, China’s Ministry of Commerce issued an injunction earlier this month to block U.S. sanctions imposed on five Chinese refiners accused ‌of buying Iranian oil.

“China believes that it’s such a powerhouse that it does not need to humor Trump’s transactional politics, and that it’s able to beat the U.S. at its own game,” said Shen Dingli, an independent international relations researcher in Shanghai. “In a way, China may either be overestimating its own strength or greatly underestimating that of the U.S.”

By contrast, China had been “very, very careful to pick its fights with the United States and it tried to minimize any cost to itself as it responded to American pressure,” said Klein, who is now a Berlin-based partner at FGS Global, a consultancy.

“That has changed now,” Klein said. “China now believes that it can incur friction with the United States in certain fields, at an acceptable cost to itself.”

While Xi has sought to project China as a rising superpower, Beijing officially refrains from endorsing the term “G2,” which Trump has used, with China reluctant to suggest that it accepts the idea of dividing spheres of influence.

But state-affiliated scholars point to a tacit recognition that China and the U.S. are “de facto G2,” with China now viewing itself as a peer of the U.S. in managing global affairs, said Mei Xinyu, senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of Commerce.

“We are seeing a lot less talking tough on China’s end compared with eight years ago because we now let the strength speak for itself,” Mei said.

During Trump’s November 2017 visit, China went all-out. It billed the event as “state visit-plus,” meaning Beijing would go beyond the usual levels of hospitality for a head of state. Trump hosted Xi and his wife at Mar-a-Lago earlier that year, and Xi wanted to return the favor — and then some.

Xi took the rare step of closing down the imperial palace complex of the Forbidden City to host Trump and first lady Melania Trump. The heavily secured private visit included tea, Peking Opera performances and a state banquet that included grouper fillet, kung pao chicken and Chinese wine.

At the time, China had high expectations for a trade deal with the U.S., only to be “shocked and humiliated” when Trump announced a trade war almost immediately after his Beijing trip, Chinese analysts said.

Now, Xi is entering the summit with minimal expectations. Prospective concrete deliverables are limited and Trump is “too engrossed in the war” to ponder trade relations with China, said Wang Yiwei, a former Chinese diplomat who is now a council member in the state-affiliated Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs.

The Chinese side also has expressed frustration over the lack of official preparations for the summit compared to 2017. The White House, for instance, did not send senior officials to Beijing for planning meetings to hammer out the details of agreements ahead of time. This may also be tempering expectations in Beijing, which typically negotiates joint statements with fastidious attention.

Nonetheless, a successful summit is as important to Xi as it is to Trump, given that Xi needs to maintain his grip on power, keep elites happy and sustain domestic support, said Susan Shirk, a former senior U.S. official on China. That points to lingering insecurity on Xi’s part, given how he has centralized power, she said.

“Underneath that all is Xi Jinping as an individual dictatorial leader,” said Shirk, now director emeritus at the 21st Century China Center at University of California at San Diego. “Preventing the downward spiral in hostile adversarial competition matters to him.”

Policymakers in Beijing also face mounting pressure to prevent further deterioration in ties with Washington, as renewed trade frictions could undermine efforts to extricate the Chinese economy from a protracted slowdown.

Despite growing tech prowess and booming exports, China in March cut its growth target to the lowest level since the early 1990s as it struggles to find a new growth engine amid a prolonged property slump, weakened consumer spending and uncertainties in global trade.

The war in Iran has also complicated matters for Beijing, which has friendly relations throughout the Middle East and wants to maintain distance from the conflict. Beijing is increasingly anxious about the spillover effect of the war and the Hormuz blockade.

In a Politburo meeting last month, Xi and other senior leaders stressed the need to “tackle external impacts systemically and enhance the level of energy security” as a hedge against a “multitude of uncertainties,” according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua News Agency.

Despite its concerns, Beijing sees 2026 as a big year for U.S.-China relations, with Xi and Trump expected to meet as many as four times.

To Xi, meeting Trump is a symbolic opportunity, Chinese experts say. Xi wants to show relations are on the mend, and that his government is working to improve the business environment, boost foreign trade and revive the economy.

“Out of all the countries in the world, it is the U.S. that has the biggest impact on China’s security interests and development,” Wang Yiwei said. “So China has a stronger desire to stabilize and improve relations with the U.S.”

Rebecca Tan in Singapore contributed to this report.