Commentary: The main Trump-Xi summit achievement will be it happening at all - CNA

The US and China are in a stand-off rather than a state of agreement, says Alan Beattie for the Financial Times.

US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping while leaving after a visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, China, May 15, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci/Pool/File Photo

LONDON: Officials are strapping on oxygen tanks and starting the final ascent. It’s a little over a week until the scheduled Xi Jinping-Donald Trump summit in Washington. 

Even if the climbing party manages to traverse the crevasse of tensions over Taiwan, which this weekend caused Xi to threaten to call off the meeting, there won’t be much to see at the peak. The summit’s main virtue is to show that relations are functional enough to meet at all. Both sides’ untrustworthiness and unilateral pursuit of strategic leverage will sharply confine its substance.

It’s common to describe the Xi-Trump relationship as transactional rather than based on principles. In reality, it isn’t even that. Anything they agree is subject to fudging and reneging. Their only real compact is a balance of terror, refraining from escalating trade or other actions for fear of mutual destruction. 

The best we can currently say is that this situation is at least holding. Trump’s rhetoric on China and particularly Xi himself has shifted from aggression to admiration.