TAIPEI, Taiwan – Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to seek concessions on Taiwan and U.S. tariffs as he meets with U.S. President Donald Trump ahead of a high-stakes summit in the shadow of the war against Iran.
President Trump will arrive in China on Wednesday night for a three-day visit, the first visit by a U.S. leader to the country since 2017, when Trump visited early in his first term.
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Unlike Mr. Trump, who is known for his fickle policy decisions, Mr. Xi is widely seen as predictable in his goals for summits, especially those that concern Beijing’s long-standing “core interests” in national security and territorial integrity.
Topping that list is Taiwan.
Taiwan’s government considers itself the de facto head of a sovereign state, while Beijing considers Taiwan an integral part of its territory.
Although the United States formally severed ties with Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China, decades ago, the United States remains committed to supporting the defense of an autonomous democracy under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979.
Under the law, the U.S. government has provided billions of dollars in arms to Taiwan and pursued cooperation in areas such as military training and intelligence sharing, which Beijing considers interference in China’s internal affairs.
The US government has officially acknowledged that China considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, but has not taken a stance on whether it agrees with that.
The United States is also intentionally vague about whether it would intervene to protect Taiwan if China attempted to annex it by force.
In a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made it clear that Taiwan would be raised at the summit, and described the issue as the “biggest risk to China-US relations,” according to a readout of the call from the Chinese side.
The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., reiterated that message Tuesday after President Trump departed for the summit, listing Taiwan as the first of “four red lines” that he “must not challenge” and “must not cross.”
Analysts say the U.S. is unlikely to change its position on Taiwan under Chinese pressure, but President Trump said this week that the summit’s agenda would also include U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, raising questions about the future of the stalled multibillion-dollar arms deal.
Congress approved an arms package worth $14 billion earlier this year, but the sale still requires final approval from President Trump.
Xi could use his meeting with Trump to “influence and persuade President Trump to agree to scale back, if not completely stop sales to Taiwan,” William Yang, a Taipei-based analyst at Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
If President Trump were to concede on arms sales to Taiwan, he would be breaking with a longstanding policy against talks with Beijing dating back to former President Ronald Reagan.
Abandoning or watering down the agreement would be a serious blow to Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-de, who is in a bitter battle with opposition parties over defense spending, Yang said.
“They hope to first influence President Trump’s decisions on this issue and create a situation in which it will be much more difficult for (the Rai administration) to request further special defense spending in the future,” Yang said.
Restoration of the US-China framework
Analysts say Xi is also keen to smooth U.S.-China relations after a turbulent 18 months in which President Donald Trump waged a second trade war with the world’s second-largest economy.
In the standoff, both sides took escalating retaliatory tariffs (temporarily imposing tariffs well above 100%) and other punitive measures, including export controls, before the United States and China entered a moratorium in May.
During their last meeting in South Korea in October, Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump agreed to suspend the trade war for a year while maintaining some trade measures, including certain tariffs and export restrictions.
Over the past month, the United States has imposed several new sanctions targeting Chinese companies, including a refiner that allegedly bought Iranian crude oil and a company that helped Iran obtain materials to make drones and missiles.
Earlier this month, the Chinese government issued a “prohibition order” directing companies to ignore U.S. sanctions on refineries.
“The Chinese government wants predictability and certainty for the remainder of President Trump’s term until January 2029, because the Chinese government needs to be able to plan its own economic policy,” Feng Chuchen, founding partner of Beijing-based advisory firm Hutong Research, told Al Jazeera.
These policy considerations include understanding the level of tariffs the United States applies to China and its trading partners, Feng said.
Wang, dean of the Department of Global Leadership at Renmin University in Beijing, said China wants to return to a relationship based on “peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and win-win cooperation.”
Wang told Al Jazeera: “I hope that through this meeting, the United States’ China policy will return to these three principles.”
Hung Poo-chao, deputy executive director of the Center for Mainland and Regional Development Studies at Tokai University in Taiwan, told Al Jazeera that the stakes are high for Beijing as Trump’s perception has changed from a “predictable trading partner” to a “more action-oriented and difficult-to-contain adversary.”
Returning U.S.-China relations to a stable footing is one way to reduce these risks, Hung said.
Hung said China’s priority is not to secure concessions, but to “adjust the current strategic position and pace of negotiations that are unfavorable to China, and return U.S.-China relations to a framework in which China has better control.”
Feng said that at the summit, Xi is likely to agree to more U.S. agricultural exports and purchases of Boeing aircraft, and may support Trump’s plan to create a trade commission and investment commission to oversee U.S.-China economic relations.
But Feng said China is unlikely to compromise on rare earths, an area it controls, unless the US makes significant political concessions.
Call for dialogue on war against Iran
The US-Israel war against Iran will likely cast a large shadow over the summit.
Although China is not a major party to the conflict, it has been hit by the economic impact of the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies normally pass.
Beijing has called for negotiations and a comprehensive ceasefire since the conflict erupted, and Xi is likely to repeat this message in his meeting with Trump, said Jody Wen, a postdoctoral fellow at Beijing’s Tsinghua University Center for International Security Strategy.
Wen told Al Jazeera: “I think Mr. Xi will talk about this issue with Donald Trump and say that dialogue is necessary because we all know that this war is having a big impact on the world, on Asian countries, and on the United States.”
President Trump said Tuesday that he doesn’t need China’s “help” to resolve the war, but the White House is pressuring Beijing to turn to Iran to reopen the strait.
Mr. Xi and his top diplomat, Mr. Wang, have met with more than a dozen world leaders and senior officials since the war began, acting as mediators behind the scenes.
China has had a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Iran since 2016, purchasing more than 80% of Iranian crude oil.
Wen, a postdoctoral fellow at Tsinghua University, said Xi is unlikely to agree to any involvement other than as a mediator, which he said is consistent with China’s long-standing approach to world affairs.
“China’s foreign policy principle is non-intervention,” she said. “These are our principles.”
