When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet in Beijing in mid-May, the optics will be grand and the words may be noteworthy. But the outcome is unlikely to be earth-shattering. What matters is not the summit itself but the divergent strategies it reveals.
That is the core argument from Hudson Institute scholars Patrick Cronin and Pinshan Lai, writing for The Diplomat, "Hvylya" reports. Trump's approach, they write, remains episodic, transactional, and politically contested at home and abroad. Xi's is comprehensive, institutionalized, and generational.
Both leaders need the summit to reinforce their visions of strategic stability. For Trump, that means projecting the United States as the one superpower capable of wielding both hard power and economic dynamism. For Xi, it means preserving sufficient global stability to keep China's long-range development plans on track. The likely reaffirmation of a trade truce will reflect tactical restraint, not strategic convergence.
China has become a well-trodden destination for leaders seeking economic growth and strategic ballast. Over the past year, leaders from Australia, India, France, South Korea, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany have all visited Beijing. The decks had been cleared for Trump's visit at the end of March - until the Iran conflict forced a six-week delay.
Cronin and Lai argue that both leaders are buying time - but Beijing is using that time with strategic clarity: reducing exposure to external volatility, tightening control, and building strength through technological self-reliance. Washington, they write, needs a comparably coherent approach - aligning industrial policy, technology investment, and defense planning to compete over time.
On Taiwan, the analysts insist that tactical restraint alone will not suffice. The United States should continue to anchor its position in the One China Policy, oppose unilateral changes to the status quo, reject coercion, and insist that cross-strait differences be resolved peacefully and with the assent of the people of Taiwan.
"Hvylya" previously examined how Taiwan could trigger a great-power crisis if the two leaders fail to negotiate.