China’s networking foreign policy versus Trump’s disruptive challenge
“Too early to say,” former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai famously said about the impact of the French Revolution when asked by his Western interlocutors. By all accounts, the Chinese leader had actually the then more recent 1968 mass protests in France in mind rather than the major revolt two centuries earlier. The misunderstanding is rooted in Beijing’s reputation for an extremely long view of geopolitics and its uniquely subtle statecraft. When thinking about the future of American power, and especially when dealing with a mercurial president in the White House, the Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping has likely adopted a similar “it’s too early to say” cautious approach. After all, as I predicted in these pages back in 2024, the second Trump administration would turn out as “far more strident, if not unhinged” in its foreign policy.
At once, the Americans have been more aggressive against adversaries in Caracas, Tehran and Havana; more contemptuous of allies in Europe and Asia; and also more conciliatory towards great powers of Russia and China. Worse, Trump has also had a notorious record for walking back deals with allies and constantly shifting the terms of engagement with adversaries. In short, the US president has repeatedly proved that he is not a reliable partner. Confronted with such radical uncertainty, the Chinese leaders have opted for performative diplomacy: They have simultaneously signaled a tough uncompromising stance on core issues (for domestic political consumption) while expressing openness to comprehensive engagement (to satisfy Trump’s ego). Holding their cards tight to their chest, the Zhongnanhai leadership hopes to secure a modicum of stability in US-China relations while riding out the Trump presidency until a more credible successor takes over.
No wonder then, the latest US-China Summit in Beijing of mid May was full of pomp and pageantry but brief and largely devoid of any major breakthrough. Far from committing to any major course of action, and even contradicting any US claim of diplomatic success, China has largely left America to reckon with the catastrophic consequences of its ill-conceived Iran war. This has exposed Trump’s limited leverage over an ascendant China, which has tariff-proofed its economy in anticipation of any new trade war with America. Even better, it managed to extract meaningful rhetorical concessions from Trump, who publicly warned Taiwan against any formal secessionist move. Meanwhile, Beijing has held onto its long-term partnerships with Russia, as Putin prepared to visit China in the following days, as well as with Iran, which has proved its mettle as a major bulwark against American power in the Middle East. Leaving nothing to chance, China is rapidly expanding its global influence in anticipation of a more multipolar post-American order.
Reading Tea Leaves
In theory, the second Trump administration should be a blessing in disguise for China. By jettisoning multilateralism, and threatening post-war alliances across Europe and Asia, the current leadership in Washington has systematically weakened the foundations of American power. For decades, successive US administrations leveraged a wide network of defense partnerships across the world to project power. In recent years, the era of ‘liberal hegemony’ – built on multilateral diplomacy, economic globalization, and transatlantic and transpacific military alliances – has given way to ‘predatory hegemony’.
Given its massive reservoir of military and economic resources, perhaps pundits such as Robert Kagan were a tad premature in declaring the terminal decline of US superpower status. But as political scientist Stephen Walt has argued, this could ultimately undermine America’s global primacy, because it “will weaken the United States and its allies alike, generate growing global resentment, create tempting opportunities for Washington’s main rivals, and leave Americans less secure, less prosperous, and less influential.” and less influential.
As an icing on the cake, Washington has also abandoned its earlier confrontational strategic posture towards other major powers in favor of an undeclared competitive co-existence if not a ‘condominium’. It is quite telling that the second Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy papers not only dropped any reference to “great power competition”, but also implored allies to assume more responsibilities for their own national defense vis-à-vis both Russia (in Europe) and China (in Indo-Pacific). America’s relatively ineffectual defense of its own bases as well as core infrastructure of Gulf allies during the recent Iran war has further eroded confidence among frontline partners. Against this backdrop, a diminished Trump embarked on his Beijing trip on May 14 after considerable delays and rescheduling. While full of platitudes and visible mutual respect, the US president, accompanied by top-business delegations of tech titans, largely played into China’s hands.
“I have agreed with President Trump on a new vision of building a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability,” Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping said in his statement. “This will provide strategic guidance for China-U.S. relations over the next three years and beyond.” As astute China experts such as Rosh Doshi have noted, this means that it was Beijing that has managed to set “a new frame for the relationship”, since “any [future] U.S. actions to reckon with excess capacity [in China’s industrial exports] or deter conflict [over Taiwan or South China Sea] could be framed by Beijing as a violation of this new frame.”
Playing the Long Game
China made no meaningful concession on all core issues from Artificial Intelligence, and strategic investments, to EV exports and rare earths export controls – and Iran, even if Beijing’s own energy security has been hit hard by the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The two sides simply agreed to continue to talk on core issues, with Xi receiving a reciprocal banquet invitation to the White House on September, likely on the sidelines on of the UN General Assembly.
While Beijing has kept Trump at bay, deftly avoiding a new round of trade war or meaningful compromise on any core issue, it is optimizing relations with key America allies. Pro-Beijing elements have already been on the move in places such as Taiwan, with the leader of the opposition Kuomintang Party, which controls the parliament, recently visiting Beijing to pay respects to Xi; openly emphasizing her “Chinese” identity; and making it clear that Taipei should “not [be] choosing” in between the two superpowers, especially since China is “family”.
Reeling from the catastrophic consequences of the Iran war, America’s key allies in Southeast Asia have also expressed concern. Singapore’s Foreign Minister publicly warned that his country, which permanently hosts US warships at the Changi port, will not take sides should a major conflict break out in maritime Asia. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who declared a national energy emergency in response to the Iran War shock, made a thinly-veiled criticism of Trump when he declared key regional states are now forced to go through a “very, very serious restructuring” in their relations with China and even Russia, which has suddenly become an existential source of energy to Manila and other Southeast Asian states.
Meanwhile, key Western nations are also hedging their bets. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, a vocal critic of Trump and an advocate for European strategic autonomy, made his fourth visit in four years to Beijing recently, where he called on the Asian superpower to play a more active role on the global stage. Earlier this year, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a highly consequential visit to China, the first in almost a decade by a British head of government, in order to end the “ice age” of bilateral relations. The upshot was a multi-billion package of economic deals coupled with to ease diplomatic tensions and relax travel restrictions for greater people-to-people interaction. Last December, the French President Emmanuel Macron had already visited Beijing, where he pushed for greater Europe-China strategic cooperation in spite of systematic rivalries.
Perhaps the most symbolically important was Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to China, which ended almost a decade of Cold War in bilateral relations and paved the way for “strategic partnership” between Beijing and America’s immediate northern neighbor. The significance of these developments were not lost on Trump, who warned,“Well, it’s very dangerous for them to do that, and it’s even more dangerous, I think, for Canada to get into business with China.” The hard truth for Trump, however, is that America’s key allies do have options – and they are not afraid to use the China card. And this music to Beijing leadership’s ears.
