US President Donald Trump’s Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping has produced a package of Chinese commitments on US soybeans, energy and aircraft, giving both governments a basis to steady relations after years of trade and security tensions.
The two-hour-and-15-minute meeting between Trump and Xi has also laid the groundwork for Washington and Beijing to rebuild bilateral relations after years of escalating trade conflicts, export controls and geopolitical disputes. Trump invited Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, to visit the White House on September 24.
Trump told Fox News on Thursday that Xi has committed to helping the US on Iran and agreed to buy US soybeans, oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and other energy products. He said China would purchase 200 Boeing 737 jets.
A US official said Xi had opposed the militarization of the Strait of Hormuz and any effort to charge a toll for its use, while showing interest in buying more American oil to reduce China’s dependence on the strait in the future.
“Both countries agreed that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon,” the official said.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington has already secured a major soybean commitment from China, confirming that one of the main agricultural pledges from the previous Trump-Xi summit remained in place.
“And then soybeans, we have a very large purchase commitment from the Busan agreement for the next three years. So beans are really all taken care of,” he said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.
At the previous Trump-Xi summit in South Korea last October, China agreed to purchase 25 million metric tons of US soybeans annually over the following three years.
Global geopolitical situations have changed since Washington captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife in January and began blocking ships from entering or leaving Iranian ports in April. Some Chinese pundits said the Middle East conflicts and global supply chain tensions have made Trump’s energy purchase request easier for Beijing to accept.
Reuters reported on Thursday that Chinese Customs appeared to have renewed licenses for hundreds of US beef exporters on Thursday, a move that would have restored market access for many plants whose permissions had expired over the past year. But then the Customs reverted the registration status of those exporters to “expired” on its website. It was unclear why Beijing made those moves.
Before the trip, observers have said Trump’s mission in China was straightforward. He wanted to help American farmers and manufacturers increase sales to China, giving Republican candidates a stronger economic message ahead of the mid-term elections in November.
Other US goals included pressing China to stop buying Iranian oil or supplying Tehran with drone parts and missile-related materials, and calling for the release of Hong Kong pro-democracy businessman Jimmy Lai.
Media reports said the two governments are expected to hold further talks to cut tariffs on about US$30 billion worth of imports not linked to national security concerns.
Meanwhile, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang’s last-minute hop onto Trump’s plane in Alaska to join the Beijing trip fueled market hopes that the two countries might have agreed on an arrangement allowing Chinese firms to import and deploy Nvidia’s H200 graphics processing units (GPUs).
Reuters reported on Thursday that the US Commerce Department has cleared about 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s H200 chips, including Alibaba, Tencent, TikTok parent ByteDance and JD.com. The US also approved Lenovo and Foxconn as distributors. Nvidia has not delivered any H200 chips to China, as Beijing has urged local firms to prioritize domestic chips over foreign processors.
Details about possible shipments of H200 to China were not immediately available.
China’s rejuvenation meets MAGA
For Beijing, Xi’s top priority at the meeting was to rebuild China-US relations and prevent heavy US tariffs from returning in early November 2026, after a one-year truce. Beijing also wants the Trump administration to stop arms sales to Taiwan and roll back tariffs and export controls on China.
At a banquet held in honor of Trump and his delegation, Xi said China-US relations concern the wellbeing of more than 1.7 billion people in both countries and affect the interests of more than eight billion people worldwide. He said both sides should rise to that historic responsibility and steer the giant ship of China-US relations steadily in the right direction.
Xi framed his own national rejuvenation agenda and Trump’s “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” slogan as compatible rather than conflicting goals.
“The people of China and the US are both great people. Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand. We can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world,” Xi said in a toast.
In the US, MAGA is a Republican slogan closely tied to Trump. In China, Xi’s “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” refers to Beijing’s goal of making China wealthy, powerful and central to global affairs by 2049, while reversing what the Communist Party calls a century of national humiliation by Western powers. The concept is also tied to Beijing’s goal of reunification with Taiwan.
“If the Taiwan issue is handled properly, the bilateral relationship between China and the US will be overall stable,” Xi told Trump in the official meeting on Thursday. “Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”
Safeguarding cross-strait peace and stability is the biggest common denominator between China and the US, he added, emphasizing that “Taiwan independence” and cross-Strait peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water. He urged the US side to exercise extra caution in handling the Taiwan question.
“I have agreed with President Trump on a new vision of building a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability,” Xi said. “I look forward to working together with you to set the course and steer the giant ship of China-US relations, so as to make 2026 a historic, landmark year that opens up a new chapter in China-US relations.”
The new vision will provide strategic guidance for bilateral relations over the next three years and beyond, and should be welcomed by the people of both countries as well as the international community, he said.
“China-US economic ties are mutually beneficial and win-win in nature,” he said. “Where disagreements and frictions exist, equal-footed consultation is the only right choice.”
He said the two governments should implement the consensus reached by the leaders and make better use of communication channels in political, diplomatic and military-to-military fields. He added that the two sides should also expand exchanges and cooperation in trade, health, agriculture, tourism, people-to-people ties and law enforcement.
Thucydides Trap
During the official meeting with Trump, Xi expressed his wishes in three questions.
“Can China and the US overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major-country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide greater stability for the world? Can we build a bright future together for our bilateral relations in the interest of the well-being of the two peoples and the future of humanity?” he said. “These are the questions vital to history, to the world and to the people.”
The Thucydides Trap is a term popularized by American political scientist Graham Allison to describe the risk of war when a rising power challenges an established power. In China-US relations, it refers to whether Beijing’s rise and Washington’s strategic dominance can be managed without military conflict.
“Some US commentators and policymakers had in recent years treated China-US rivalry as unavoidable, saying the two countries had already fallen into the Thucydides Trap and were bound to compete for supremacy,” said Cui Hongjian, a professor at the Academy of Regional and Global Governance at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “This pessimistic and negative sentiment not only affected China-US relations, but also affected the international community, raising the sense of insecurity and uncertainty.”
He said the latest Trump-Xi meeting, coming after their summit in Busan, showed both sides wanted to move the relationship away from pessimism and back toward controlled engagement.
“This has resolved a major psychological concern in the international community,” he said. “This interaction is expected to reverse that sense of losing control and put the two countries back on a track of reasonably and effectively managing their relationship.”
Read: Trump-Xi summit to weigh US energy sales amid Hormuz crisis
Follow Jeff Pao on X at @jeffpao3
