U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing could have been a disaster instead of a damp squib. He could have made an embarrassing faux pas, handed over the United States’ most advanced technology, or created a new crisis by imposing new major sanctions in an attempt to regain the upper hand on Chinese President Xi Jinping. Given all the tumult in the world, a meeting marked by promises of new dialogue and stability, however unsubstantial they are so far, should be welcomed.

That said, the summit was still disappointing for the United States at both the strategic and tactical levels. Trump accepted a framing of the relationship that better suits China than the United States and helps China consolidate the considerable gains that it has made over the past year. Although it is still too early to conclude, as Xi has argued, that “the East is rising and the West is falling,” given China’s momentum, Mao Zedong’s dictum, “The east wind is prevailing over the west wind,” may be more accurate in the near term.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing could have been a disaster instead of a damp squib. He could have made an embarrassing faux pas, handed over the United States’ most advanced technology, or created a new crisis by imposing new major sanctions in an attempt to regain the upper hand on Chinese President Xi Jinping. Given all the tumult in the world, a meeting marked by promises of new dialogue and stability, however unsubstantial they are so far, should be welcomed.

That said, the summit was still disappointing for the United States at both the strategic and tactical levels. Trump accepted a framing of the relationship that better suits China than the United States and helps China consolidate the considerable gains that it has made over the past year. Although it is still too early to conclude, as Xi has argued, that “the East is rising and the West is falling,” given China’s momentum, Mao Zedong’s dictum, “The east wind is prevailing over the west wind,” may be more accurate in the near term.

The summit signifies two dramatic turns, one in the long arc of the United States’ China policy and the second in Washington’s currently ineffectual negotiating skills. Trump traveled to Beijing as the leader of a diminished power, brought about as much by the administration’s own debasement of the country’s sources of power as it was by China’s persistent efforts at self-strengthening.

The just-completed summit stands in sharp relief to the visit that then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan made 42 years ago in late April 1984. Although he also praised China’s leaders and was optimistic about ties, the orientation of the relationship and relative power balance was quite different.

In his toast at the welcoming banquet hosted by Premier Zhao Ziyang, a reformist who would be removed from power following the Tiananmen crackdown in June 1989, Reagan stressed the positives of an economically developed China, saying, “As China moves forward to modernize and develop its economy, the United States is eager to join in a cooperative effort to share the American capabilities that helped........

© Foreign Policy