US President Donald Trump is set to visit China from May 14 to 15. This will mark the first visit by a US president to China since 2017 – and notably, the president who visited China in 2017 was also Trump himself.
This reflects how distant US-China relations have become over the years. Even if some people hope that relations between Washington and Beijing could improve should the Democratic Party return to the White House in January 2029 after Trump leaves office, such expectations are unlikely to materialize.
Although the US Democratic Party is often viewed as comparatively moderate, during the presidency of Joe Biden, Washington’s tariff policies towards China were in reality no more relaxed than those implemented during Trump’s first term. Therefore, the long-term trend of growing distance and strategic separation between the United States and China is likely to continue.
What, then, is the purpose of Trump’s latest visit to China? To suggest that the deterioration in US-China relations was caused merely by trade frictions and Trump’s tariff policies would not present the full picture.
The core problem between the two countries lies in the fact that the United States and China are built upon fundamentally different economic systems, standards, infrastructures, and legal logics. Under such circumstances, establishing deep mutual trust and maintaining long-term cooperation is close to impossible. As a result, the global economic system has gradually begun splitting into two separate camps: one centered on the United States and its allies within the traditional market-based system, and another centered on China and its partners within an emerging alternative economic framework.
At the same time, these two systems are increasingly evolving toward a Cold War-style rivalry. Against this backdrop, Trump’s visit to China is most likely aimed at determining whether the two blocs led respectively by the United States and China are moving toward rapid decoupling, or the separation will instead proceed at a slower and more controlled pace.
As such, the outcome of the meeting between the US and Chinese leaders will likely involve ambiguous signals regarding the issue of Iran, while producing no meaningful breakthroughs on matters related to Japan and Taiwan. The United States and China may reach limited consensus on certain trade issues, but such agreements will not fundamentally resolve the structural trade conflicts between the two countries.
In reality, if both sides are able to maintain a certain degree of restraint in their strategic competition and prevent tensions from escalating beyond control, that alone may ultimately become the most significant achievement of this summit meeting.
Andrew Wong is a veteran independent commentator
𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓
