Foreign & Public Diplomacy

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief. The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping leaves Washington without much to show for his White House summit, U.S. student numbers in China haven’t recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, and F-35 fighter jet parts land in Beijing’s lap in a mistaken shipment to Hong Kong.

What to Make of the Trump-Xi Summit

Chinese President Xi Jinping left Washington last week with the air of a man who has just made a dutiful social call to an aging relative. The summit between Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump was—as widely expected—a nothing burger, ending with little more than Trump’s fulsome praise of both the Chinese leader and himself.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief. The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping leaves Washington without much to show for his White House summit, U.S. student numbers in China haven’t recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, and F-35 fighter jet parts land in Beijing’s lap in a mistaken shipment to Hong Kong.

What to Make of the Trump-Xi Summit

Chinese President Xi Jinping left Washington last week with the air of a man who has just made a dutiful social call to an aging relative. The summit between Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump was—as widely expected—a nothing burger, ending with little more than Trump’s fulsome praise of both the Chinese leader and himself.

Even Fox News was unable to muster a similar level of enthusiasm, while Chinese state media gave the summit routine coverage that had largely fallen out of the headlines by Monday.

But in the U.S.-China relationship at present, nothing might be better than something. Neither superpower seems to have the appetite for a costly confrontation, whether over trade or Taiwan. Awkward topics are simply not brought up, from China’s reported intelligence support for Iran to U.S. Republican claims that Beijing has hypnotized Americans into opposing data centers.

It helps that the trade teams for the two sides have gotten on surprisingly well since spending time together........

© Foreign Policy