WASHINGTON, September 19 — President Xi Jinping of China and President Donald Trump will meet in Washington next week, a summit previewed by the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis in an article published on September 18, titled “What to Watch at the Xi-Trump Summit.” The piece, produced with ChinaFile, the online magazine published by Asia Society, examines the issues likely to dominate the meeting — trade and technology, Taiwan, and regional security — and carries analysis from CCA experts Neil Thomas, Lizzi C.
Lee, Craig Allen, Paul Triolo, Helen Toner, Lyle Morris and Jing Qian. Media seeking interviews were directed to the institute by email.
Beijing’s calculus
Thomas, a senior fellow on Chinese politics at CCA, wrote that Beijing sees the present moment as a golden opportunity to accelerate industrial self-reliance and strengthen its geoeconomic leverage while limiting further U.S. pressure. Many Chinese strategists, he noted, regard the U.S. president as a relatively benign figure in Washington when it comes to dealing with Beijing. Word around D.C., Thomas added, is that more hawkish officials have drafted several proposals to hobble China’s high-tech industries, ready to go if Trump sours on Xi.
Beijing, he wrote, is eager to make the summit a success in Trump’s eyes without making significant concessions on AI-model distillation, industrial overcapacity or rare-earth export controls. He expected progress on Trump’s Board of Trade and Board of Investment initiatives, promises of additional Chinese purchases of U.S. goods, more dialogues, and an extension of the economic truce — though he noted an agreed duration would be moot if Trump decides to pivot on China.
If all goes well, the two leaders may end the summit by confirming that Trump will attend APEC in Shenzhen and Xi the G20 in Miami later this year. If things do not go well, we will know much sooner.
A strong hand, and a vulnerable one
Lee, a fellow on the Chinese economy at CCA, wrote that China comes to Washington with a strong hand. Xi has good reason to lower tensions with the U.S., she argued, but will not make concessions on Beijing’s manufacturing ambitions precisely because those strengths explain the country’s current resilience.
That resilience, she added, may itself be a deeper source of vulnerability: a model supported by domestic tech and manufacturing strength and external tech demand is unusually vulnerable to geopolitical risks, including export controls and swings in the global AI investment boom. Lee said she is not optimistic about a grand deal this month, but that signs both sides are willing to build the machinery for a deeper conversation on healthier, more balanced economic models would matter.
Leadership-level intent still has to translate into bureaucratic incentives on both sides, she wrote, which no single summit can do in one fell swoop.
The truce, and the complaints
Allen, a non-resident senior fellow at CCA, wrote that CEOs in technology industries will be interested to see whether there is an extension of the export control truce agreed at APEC last year, under which both sides agreed to postpone implementation of new and expansive export control measures for one year. To date both governments have myriad complaints about the other. The U.S. is concerned about lack of access to rare earth elements; the Chinese are concerned about lack of access to aircraft parts and recently announced FCC regulations.
Both sides blame the other. What to watch next, then, is less the communiqué than the machinery.
Thomas’s expected deliverables — the board initiatives, the purchases, the dialogues, the truce extension — are the measurable tests. Lee’s point is the harder one: whether leadership intent survives contact with the bureaucracies on either side. The summit will supply the first signal, and, if Thomas is right, the answer will arrive either at the close of the meeting or considerably sooner.
