When American and Chinese presidents meet, it is usually the upstart China that is desperate to be treated as an equal by the world’s pre-eminent superpower. Yet on May 14 when Donald Trump flies to Beijing for the first of four meetings planned this year with President Xi Jinping, he will be the one in the weaker position.
This is partly because of Trump’s undisguised admiration for authoritarian leaders. But mainly it is because he will arrive needing China’s help in bringing his war with Iran to a close.
This summit was originally billed as being the moment when Trump and Xi would turn the truce they declared in their trade war last October into a more permanent agreement. The battle of import tariffs on each other’s products would not end in anything like free trade but would at least be replaced by some sort of stability, close to the current level estimated by the Peterson Institute for International Economics of an average 47.5% American tax on Chinese imports and a 31.9% Chinese tax on imports from America.
Yet although trade and economics will still play a prominent role in the Beijing meeting, and will likely lead to some sort of agreement over a new dispute-resolution mechanism between the two countries, it will not be the most important issue under discussion. That issue will be Iran: how to handle Iran’s nuclear-weapons and uranium-enrichment program and how to achieve an agreement between the warring parties that can allow oil tankers and other shipping to pass freely through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow body of water between Iran and Oman that is currently being blockaded by both Iran and the United States.
The Beijing summit was originally supposed to take place in mid-April but was postponed at Trump’s request because of his Iran war. It seemed possible that, in the few days before the Xi-Trump meeting, the Iranians and Americans might come to an interim agreement on the basis of the peace plans put forward by both countries. That would have owed much to Trump’s desire to fly to Beijing without the shadow of war hanging over him. But Trump has rejected the Iranian proposal.
In any case, a long-term solution will rely upon an agreement by both sides with China, for China is the only major power that is both a partner of the Iranians and capable of overseeing a nuclear agreement.
Unlike its strategic partner, Russia, China has been reluctant to intervene overtly and directly in foreign conflicts. It is supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, but has so far avoided getting directly involved, in either military or diplomatic terms. The same is true of Iran’s war with America and Israel.
China has assisted the Iranian regime by continuing to buy Iranian oil and other commodities, insofar as they have been attainable. But it has also encouraged another of its partners, Pakistan, to act as a mediator between Iran and the United States. Even more notably, on May 6 it welcomed Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, on a visit to Beijing. Araghchi was certainly not there as a tourist.
It would not be in China’s interest to embarrass Trump by making a big show of its role in bringing an end to a war that the American president began more than two months ago. As China is by far the world’s biggest importer of oil, it shares an interest with America, Europe and the rest of the world in opening up Hormuz and getting the price of oil back down to pre-war levels. Displaying a willingness to collaborate over restricting the spread of nuclear weapons would also help burnish China’s claimed credentials as a force for peace and stability, credentials that have been severely damaged by its support for Russia in Ukraine.
The hope must be that this positive role, and the leverage over Trump that it provides, does not make Xi Jinping overconfident. Taiwan is the country that stands to lose the most from an overconfident Xi, either through his being emboldened enough to attempt an invasion or a coercive blockade or through his persuading a grateful Trump to weaken US support for Taiwan’s autonomy.
In truth, Xi is unlikely to attempt an invasion or blockade, for the examples of Russia in Ukraine and America in Iran have displayed clearly the costs and risks of military adventurism. China’s better hope is to wait until Taiwan’s next presidential election in January 2028, which could bring to power someone more favorable to China or at least more manipulable than the pro-independence figures who have run Taiwan for the past decade.
He is likelier to press Trump to reduce America’s sales of weapons to Taiwan as an unstated quid pro quo for helping with Iran.
The oddity of this supposed summit of the giants in Beijing is that neither country is in fact in a strong position. One of the most enduring propaganda messages throughout Xi’s 13 years as his country’s leader has been the claim that America is declining while China is rising. In economic terms, this is plainly not true: China’s annual GDP peaked at 77% of America’s in 2021 but has since fallen back to only a little over 60%.
The once-widespread predictions that it would soon overtake the United States have been quietly abandoned as China’s economy has been weakened by a property crash and demographic decline, and America’s has powered ahead thanks to technology investment. Now, it would take a collapse of the US dollar and a big rise in China’s currency to make it plausible that China could overtake America at any time in the next few decades, or possibly ever.
Meanwhile, one of the ironies of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is that in strategic and geopolitical terms he has done more than any American president in living memory to make the Chinese message of decline look as if it could come true. He has done his best to destroy or damage the security alliances in Europe and Asia on which America has depended for the past 80 years. He has made America less attractive to international scientists and other talented emigrants and has alienated populations all around the world that were previously favorable to the United States.
Most important, however, is the fact that although the war Trump started in Iran on February 28th displayed American military prowess it also displayed the country’s strategic weaknesses. America has shown that it is currently unable to produce enough of its impressively sophisticated weapons to last for more than a few weeks in an intense conflict. And, above all, American overconfidence leads it to start wars that it does not know how to finish.
When overconfidence is attached to strategic incompetence the result is disastrous. We should all keep that in mind when we see Presidents Xi and Trump parading proudly in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing next week, or indeed when watching reruns of Vladimir Putin’s May 9 “Victory Parade” in Moscow. All three of our nuclear superpowers show the same dangerous mix.
This English original of an article first published by La Stampa in Italian translation is republished with permission. It can also be found, along with many other articles, on Bill Emmott’s Global View.
