President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with China’s president, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Thursday for a two-day summit. The question that hovers over the encounter is deceptively simple: what does China want?

This question has been posed since the founding of the People’s Republic and carries a sharper edge today. In early March, the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, one of China’s most prominent foreign affairs think tanks, gathered the “good and great” of Beijing’s strategists, some former senior Chinese officials, and a contingent of foreign scholars for its annual dialogue. The conversation circled around the same question: What does China want?

Yet rather than offering a clear articulation of Beijing’s ambitions, many participants framed their answers in the opposite—insisting that what China does not want is to become a superpower in the image of the United States.

So, how does China see the world?

Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has embraced what might be called a “China First” approach to the world. The phrase does not echo the populist rallying overtones it carries elsewhere. It reflects how Chinese elites and the public perceive their country’s position in the world, along with a hierarchy of priorities: reducing vulnerability to external pressure with reasonable growth; managing—rather than resolving—its deepening rivalry with the United States; and stabilizing China’s periphery.

“China First” is a vision of global leadership that is conditional, instrumental, and always subordinate to Beijing’s imperatives of domestic prosperity creation, national security, and regime survival.

What does "China First” mean?

Beijing’s “China First” strategy is a pragmatic approach to managing its domestic concerns and foreign affairs. The playbook prioritizes economic and technological self-reliance; long-term political stability, secured by cementing the authority of the Chinese state and the Communist Party; prudently managing—not resolving—rivalry with the United States; and consolidating regional dominance along its periphery. It reflects both ambition and insecurity. China is more powerful than ever, and yet it is more cautious and inward focused. 

Since joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China’s rise has been defined by integration into global markets, multilateral institutions, and sprawling supply chains. Today, its trajectory is shaped increasingly by insulation. Today, Beijing is focused on building economic resilience against technological chokepoints, geopolitical encirclement, and the volatility of an international order it neither fully trusts nor wishes to abandon. The result is not a retreat from the world, but a recalibration of how China engages with it.

Under President Xi, this “China First” strategy has grown both more explicit and more tightly enforced. The guiding concept of “national rejuvenation” frames China’s rise not as an open ended pursuit of global leadership, but as a historically bounded project: restoring the wealth, power, and status the country believes it deserves. Within this narrative, foreign policy is not a vehicle for ideological expansion or a universal mission; it is an instrument calibrated to shape an external environment conducive to China’s domestic priorities.

In March, China unveiled its 15th Five-Year Plan, laying out the country’s economic objectives and development trajectory from 2026 to 2030. The political blueprint marked a significant departure from the plans of the past three decades. Where earlier plans were focused on maximizing economic growth, this one places far greater emphasis on resilience in an era of mounting........

© Time