Trump-Xi summit: China doesn’t put too much score on this visit; outcome won’t matter much for India

Donald Trump descended from Air Force One on Wednesday evening, a gaggle of American CEOs in tow, to a tightly choreographed ceremonial welcome in China. A military honour guard played the band, and three hundred Chinese students resplendent in blue and white waved Chinese and American flags as Trump and his entourage made their way through the tarmac over a red carpet. The US president seemed pleased as punch. He even punched the air.

Rest assured, taciturn Xi won’t show such emotions. He will be busy calculating.

Every moment of this trip, at least from the Chinese side, would have been rehearsed down to the minutest detail. Even as Trump was aboard Air Force One getting ready to land, his treasury secretary Scott Bessent was wrapping up a three-hour meeting with Chinese trade negotiators at South Korea’s Incheon airport, a discussion that ended only a couple of hours before Trump touched down in Beijing.

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Evidently, the deliverables from the high-profile meeting between the two principals were still being thrashed out. Settling that aspect was crucial for the visit to go off smoothly. It reinforces what we already know about Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party — their obsession with control and message discipline.

The well-coordinated reception, the projection of warmth and colour with children, the pomp and flattery, the assiduously calibrated diplomatic protocol, the high-level delegation at the airport led by Chinese vice-president, every bit of this ceremonial welcome was aimed at massaging the vainglorious Trump’s ego so that he may feel important, regardless of what the Chinese side might actually think of him.

Note that in the CCP’s hierarchy, the title of vice-president is little more than a figurehead reflective of a system where the general secretary of the CCP, and not the Chinese president, is the ‘paramount leader’.

The New York Times quotes a Chinese historian at Columbia University, as saying, that “Beijing sent Han Zheng to Trump’s inauguration and knows that his title of vice president, even though it is a ceremonial role, will impress the status-conscious American president… It’s an example of how, throughout this summit, China is hoping to trade symbolism for substance — using protocol and Trump’s preference for pageantry to hold off a return to economic escalation and buy time for China.”

Han is not a member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee, having stepped down from that position earlier, and sending him to receive Trump this time may indicate a subtle shift in Beijing’s approach. In 2017, when Trump first visited Beijing as the US president, Politburo member and China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi was sent to receive him. The underlying messaging is layered, to indicate China is now more confident, assertive and holds the ‘better cards’, especially on the economic issues.

Sana Hashmi of Taiwan Exchange Foundation points out on X that Trump’s visit is being deliberately underplayed in English language Chinese media — to convey a sense that this isn’t such a big deal in China, that Beijing retains “relative leverage”, while prominent Mandarin coverage projects a message at home that “China is important enough that the US president still has to engage Beijing.”

These little games are being played by Beijing with full knowledge of the fact that the world’s attention is fixed on this meeting, and what comes of it. But I would hasten to differ from the prevalent media discourse around Trump’s visit on two specific points.

One, I do not think China places too much score on Trump’s two-day summit with Xi, notwithstanding the message at large it intends to project. Two, regardless of what transpires between the two leaders, it won’t make a significant material difference to India’s fortunes because the structural alignment of India-China-US triangulation has undergone a thorough transformation.

Let’s take the points one at a time. Trump and Xi head into the summit from two completely different places. The beleaguered US president is stuck in the Iran quagmire, where a fragile ceasefire extends a strategic deadlock. Trump delayed meeting Xi hoping the Iran “excursion” will play out but three months into the war, Trump is caught in a royal bind with no good options in hand. He desperately seeks an exit route, and Iran, that retains most of its military capabilities and leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, is in no mood to give him one, especially one that Trump may sell as a ‘win’.

The biggest oil shock in modern history has sent the economies of poorer nations in a tailspin, and even the US economy is feeling the strain. Inflation is rising, gas prices are up, and Trump’s ratings have taken a severe beating. The war is unpopular at home, the Republicans are restive ahead of midterms, America’s munitions are depleted, military assets redeployed from elsewhere to West Asia, and going into the summit Trump has a weaker hand against Xi.

In contrast, Xi believes China has handled Trump’s tariff war with relative ease, and a chastened US president is no longer in a position to impose sweeping tariffs having lost a crucial ruling at the US Supreme Court. In rare earths and critical minerals, Xi holds all the aces, and he can increase or decrease Trump’s pain point at will. The indispensability of rare earth elements to the manufacturing of green energy systems, defence equipment, and high-tech electronics provide China with significant strategic leverage. This was evident last year when Chinese export restrictions forced Trump to walk back his 145% tariff escalation threat.

China is also uniquely positioned because it remains the biggest buyer of Iran’s crude and retains leverage over Tehran. Though Trump claims he won’t press Xi on Iran, his treasury secretary Scott Bessent last week called on Beijing to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It would seem that Trump needs the summit more than Xi does, and the Chinese president will be aware of the dynamic.

Trump is looking for saleable headline ‘wins’ from the summit, such as securing Chinese purchase commitments for Boeing or soybeans to reduce the trade deficit and bolster support ahead of the midterms. The gaggle of CEOs, including the likes of Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang or Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg will look to seal commercial contracts, lobby Xi for removal of regulatory barriers or push for the “opening up” of the Chinese market for high-end AI chips that are stuck in a web of both US export controls and Chinese retaliatory permissions.

For China, however, the objectives from the summit are centred more on security and ‘tactical gains’. Beijing’s priority is to prevent a full-scale return to the trade wars of the past. But even more than that, Xi would want to leverage his cards and secure a commitment from Trump on Taiwan. He might insist on two things. One, ask Trump to review his decision to sell arms to Taiwan, and two, demand a semantic revision reflecting a clearer US pledge that ‘Taiwan is a part of China’, reflecting language that mirrors China’s own position on Taiwan.

As James Palmer of Foreign Policy writes, “It may be easy to get Trump to use language that reflects the Chinese position — for instance, that the US accepts that Taiwan is part of China. This does not match the long-standing and complicated US policy, which accepts that there is ‘one China’ and that the Chinese Communist Party is its legitimate representative but takes no official stance on whether Taiwan is a part of China, although it acknowledges China’s position that it is.”

Beyond these symbolic victories, Beijing remains deeply sceptical of Trump’s unpredictability and considers him unworthy of trust for any ‘grand strategic bargain’. This mismatch in perception lies at the core of my argument that China doesn’t place too much of score on this summit. While Trump might wish to strike a ‘grand bargain’ — consider the way he has kept China hawks at bay and has been reluctant to use economic weapons — Xi calculates that a two-time US president whose power is likely to get eroded in midterms is essentially a lame duck one, and in terms of continuity in US-China ties Trump can contribute very little except rhetorical bombast. Trump frequently flips positions and even his signed agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.

Now, on to my second point. I posit that even though India is watching the summit with nervous anticipation, perhaps fearful of a grand ‘G2 bargain’, the deeper reality for India is that the outcome of this summit is almost secondary to a more fundamental shift in the global order.

Regardless of whether the two leaders emerge with a handshake or a fresh set of grievances, India’s decades-long ploy of ‘free-riding’ on the structural rivalry between Washington and Beijing has officially reached its expiration date.

As the US pivoted toward a policy of containment and “extreme competition” with China — seeing its rise and military prowess as a ‘pacing threat’ — New Delhi was the geopolitical beneficiary. By positioning itself as the ‘democratic counterweight’ in the Indo-Pacific, India was able to garner US technology, defence cooperation, and some strategic leeway.

As Trump’s conciliatory posture towards Xi illustrates, the era where India could build its China policy primarily around the scaffolding of American hostility towards Beijing is gone. What we have in its place is a China increasingly emboldened by its own progress, its confidence boosted by the relative decline of a superpower that is enmeshed in self-created crises, and a paranoid United States led by Trump that has taken a hyper-transactional posture towards all strategic partners and allies, including India.

Resultantly, India is getting squeezed from both sides. Consider the fact that coinciding with the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor, China’s state media made it a point to publicise the fact that it had helped Pakistan in taking down a Rafale fighter jet during the conflict. It reflects Beijing’s belief that such a message carries no downside for itself, instead it tempers India’s celebration. China is now openly telling India that it arms Pakistan and New Delhi can do nothing about it. What has been India’s reaction? A careful statement, without naming China, that “it is for nations that consider themselves responsible to reflect on whether supporting or protecting terrorist infrastructure affects their reputation and standing”.

New Delhi may have taken umbrage, but such is its predicament that it is compelled to reopen the investment window to China by amending the Press Note 3 (PN3) framework. New Delhi is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. A transactional US is slapping steep tariffs, openly declaring that it will “not to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago”, cozying up to Pakistan disregarding a bunch of India’s red lines and in effect, forcing New Delhi to develop a new compact with Beijing, in Beijing’s terms.

Harassed by Trump, Modi had rushed to Tianjin for the SCO Summit last year to show to the US that India is not bereft of options. The rapprochement, however, also revealed the limits of India’s strategy. China has even less reasons to be conciliatory towards New Delhi.

The security architecture between Washington and New Delhi that was previously anchored by a mutual desire to contain Beijing had integrated India into the heart of US Indo-Pacific strategy. Trump has completely abandoned the Indo-Pacific pivot in favour of a primacy on Western Hemisphere. He is tangled in an unwinnable war in Iran and is showing a preference for bilateral reconciliation with Xi, loosening restrictions on advanced semiconductor sales and delaying defence exports to Taiwan.

This shift has revived India’s anxiety over US unreliability and fear that it will be left isolated. But the crucial part is this: whether Trump and Xi emerge with a ‘grand bargain’, continue with their controlled rivalry or suffer a fallout, India must build its own deterrence, its own economic resilience, and its own regional influence.

Whatever Trump and Xi decide in Beijing, India’s China problem will remain entirely India’s to manage, perhaps in a much more challenging environment.

(Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)