WASHINGTON - Since returning to office in 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump has already met Chinese President Xi Jinping in person three times, but the more they see each other, the more it seems that the substance of their talks is becoming superficial.
Xi's three-day state visit to Washington, filled with pomp and circumstance, concluded Friday without any surprises.
No major clashes came to the fore, even as the U.S.-China relationship continues to be increasingly competitive. Holding back his trademark aggressive diplomatic style, Trump treated Xi warmly throughout and repeatedly accentuated their friendship.
As with many other foreign policy experts, Daniel Kritenbrink, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said Trump and his team, as well as their Chinese counterparts, wanted more than anything to keep bilateral ties stable, rather than deliver a long list of concrete agreements.
Kritenbrink, who prepared for Xi's last 2015 state visit to the United States as senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council, characterized the latest visit as defined by "optics over outcomes and symbolism over substance."
U.S. and Chinese officials think it matters that the presidents of the world's two most powerful countries meet frequently and facilitate leader-to-leader diplomacy, because at least if they communicate, the tension-fraught relations are less likely to explode abruptly.
Reminiscent of the final days of his predecessor Joe Biden's era, Trump's current approach to China centers on putting guardrails in place in areas where the two countries are in dispute, rather than aiming for grand deals that could alter the trajectory of their strategic rivalry.
One tangible outcome, announced by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday, the eve of the Trump-Xi summit, was an extension of their trade truce, due to expire Nov. 10.
The one-year truce was agreed last October in South Korea when Trump met Xi in person for the first time since 2019, after the world's two largest economies threatened to derail global growth with tit-for-tat tariffs exceeding 100 percent.
Pushing back the deadline was expected, as both sides have seen it as essential to sustain the current broader detente between Washington and Beijing.
But the real focus was on the length of that extension.
The de-escalation is not for stability per se. U.S.-China watchers have widely seen the arrangement as serving both sides' interests -- buying time to minimize weak points and polish future strategies.
The United States and China have agreed to prolong the economic ceasefire, which includes a pause on new Chinese export controls for rare earths vital to high-tech products, by two months to Jan. 10, according to Bessent.
The truce's duration offers valuable hints about the U.S.-China relationship in the months ahead.
This year offers a rare opportunity for Trump and Xi to hold meetings at a pace that would normally be impossible.
As Trump and Xi have said, they could meet two more times in 2026 -- in mid-November, when China hosts an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders' meeting in Shenzhen, and again in mid-December, when a Group of 20 summit takes place in Miami.
The two-month extension was almost certainly designed to keep the rapprochement between the two countries on course at least through the end of the year.
In other words, there is no guarantee that tensions will not flare up again, given that mutual frustration among U.S. and Chinese officials simmers beneath the surface and Trump could face fewer political constraints after the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Trump's falling approval ratings stemming from voter dissatisfaction over higher prices and an unpopular war with Iran have put Republican control of Congress at risk, leading him to apply the brakes on further taking assertive steps, including toward China.
China was believed to have sought a longer extension of the managed detente as it did not want to brace for an unpredictable Trump ahead of the Communist Party's once-in-five-year congress in the fall of 2027, where Xi is expected to secure a fourth term as leader.
Kritenbrink, who is now a partner at The Asia Group, a strategic advisory firm based in Washington, said he has heard U.S. officials foresee that the relationship will be more volatile, partly because, in their view, Beijing has failed to live up to its promise to restore the flow of rare earths to the United States.
"U.S.-China relations have always been leader-led, always led from the White House, but I'm not sure I've ever seen an instance where there felt like there was as much of a disconnect between where the leaders are and where the two countries' bureaucracies are," he said. "There's a natural tension there, and we'll have to see how that's managed going forward."
Turning eyes to what this means to Asia, Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the detente is enabling China to adopt a more confrontational approach against U.S. allies and partners in the region, including Japan and Taiwan.
"Beijing is using this moment to put even more pressure on American friends, while the United States seeks to maintain stability with China and extricate itself from the Iran war," the veteran Asia expert said. "The Trump administration has not pushed back firmly against this coercive campaign, which is deeply concerning."
