China Power | Diplomacy | East Asia

Chinese Experts Read the Trump-Xi Summit as a Power-Shift Moment

A survey of 50 Chinese-language commentaries published around the summit shows the trip being described as a paradigmatic shift.

U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a welcome ceremony with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, May 14, 2026.

When China’s leader Xi Jinping welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing on May 13, he framed the agreement to build “a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability” as the opening of a possible “new paradigm” in bilateral relations. Chinese commentators have embraced that framing with an enthusiasm that goes well beyond ritual endorsement of Xi Jinping Thought.

A survey of 50 Chinese-language commentaries published around the summit shows the trip being described variously as a possible “turning point in the current phase,” an “important conceptual innovation and policy breakthrough,” an event of “milestone historical significance,” and a “rewriting of the underlying logic of international relations.” Zheng Yongnian, author of that last phrase, speculated that the meeting “may prove to have more far-reaching historical significance than Nixon’s visit to China.” 

State media have cautioned that “positioning is not crystallization, and planning is not arrival,” but many experts appear to treat the summit itself as a paradigmatic shift. Several authors engage openly with the G-2 concept that Beijing has formally rejected: Sun Liping, for instance, wrote that the G-2 is “taking shape” and constitutes the “thickest beam” in an emerging new world order.

The optimism is not unconditional. Some authors distinguished symbolic importance from the harder question of implementation. Others pointed to the uncertainty in U.S. domestic politics – warning that Washington could be pulled back to a more hawkish line under a future Democratic administration, or if Trump loses his nerve after the midterms. 

A second group foregrounded the constrained environment that pushed Trump to the table. Sun Lijian described the summit as a “political lifeline” for Trump; Li Pinbao called it a “pressure valve.” The implication is that détente may rest as much on Trump’s immediate need for relief – from inflation, Iran, trade pressure, and the midterms – as on any deeper structural reconciliation. 

Western analysis has interpreted Beijing’s goal as “buying time,” and Wu Xinbo, director of Fudan University’s Center for American Studies, gave the most direct Chinese exponent of that reading: if “constructive strategic stability” can hold for the next three years, he wrote, it will “extend our period of strategic stability and win time and space for our development.”

These caveats do not overturn the broader consensus that the structural conditions of the relationship have changed. Of the 50 authors surveyed, 17 expressed confidence in a lasting and sustainable thaw; 11 focused on the three-year window of Trump’s presidency officially flagged as the initial timeframe; 16 took a “wait and see” position. Only six primarily emphasized the fragility of the pause. Given the usual skepticism in Chinese assessments of U.S. intentions, the balance of opinion is striking.

Wu Xinbo’s analysis was especially revealing. In a pre-summit article, he described the post-Busan stabilization as a “fragile stability” resting not on bilateral consensus but on Washington’s domestic need to ease relations with China. Following the summit, his tone was markedly more optimistic: where the post-Busan stability had been fragile, “this time is different,” and the new positioning “signifies that this stability is not temporary, but rather strategic and sustainable.” Wu’s assessment carried a participant-observer quality by virtue of his attendance at Xi’s opening banquet for Trump; he cited the friendly atmosphere as further evidence that the diplomatic mood has changed.

What explains the shift from tactical relief to strategic optimism is not a belief that Trump has become benign, or that Washington’s intentions have softened. It is that the balance of power has changed. In this reading, the summit was significant precisely because it appears to make that shift visible – the moment at which a more equal relationship becomes apparent. 

Wang Yong argued that a “major change in the balance of power” has forced Washington to view........

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