Summit in Beijing
Hoping for a Deal: Trump as a Supplicant Before Xi
U.S. President Donald Trump is traveling to Beijing for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the first time in nearly ten years. The meeting is overshadowed by the Iran conflict, which has weakened Trump internationally. That is not the only reason he is arriving as a supplicant...
Xi is going into the summit with the better hand, as Ralph Weber, a China expert at the University of Basel, explained on Monday evening on “ZiB 2.” Because “Xi can speak from a position of greater calm, while Trump is preoccupied with the Iran war.”
War overshadows the talks
Operation “Epic Rage,” the end of which Trump has already grandly announced on multiple occasions, highlights the weakness of the U.S. For despite its military inferiority, the mullah regime in Tehran holds a powerful lever of pressure in the form of the Strait of Hormuz. By blocking this vital oil export route, Iran has the global economy in a stranglehold.
China needs Iranian oil
Trump is therefore coming to Beijing as a supplicant. He must hope that China will act as a mediator in the deadlocked situation in the Middle East. But Beijing also has a major interest of its own in a lasting peace agreement with Iran: the world’s steadily growing second-largest economy is thirsty for Iranian oil.
While Trump has so far failed to reach an agreement, the People’s Republic can now act as a peacemaker. In the run-up to the summit, China called on Pakistan, which has moderated previous talks between the U.S. and Iran, to step up its mediation efforts.
“Don’t Need Help”
The U.S. president downplayed his weak position in the run-up to the trip: When asked whether Xi could be helpful in the Iran conflict, Trump said, “I don’t think we need any help at all in Iran.” Xi is someone with whom he gets along very well. “This is going to be a very exciting trip. A lot of great things are going to happen,” said the U.S. president.
To observers, it’s clear what Trump means by this: He wants to make deals to look good back home. Especially with the midterm elections in November in mind, Trump needs economic successes to make up for his dismal poll numbers.
Corporate CEOs in tow
It’s no coincidence that he has a number of top CEOs in tow, led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook. At the last minute, Trump also invited Jensen Huang, the head of Nvidia, the leading manufacturer of AI chips, to join the trip to China. Beijing had only just approved the import of Nvidia’s H200 chips in January.
The corporate executives traveling with him see the summit as a political opening to overcome regulatory hurdles in China. This is reflected in the stock market in the run-up to the event: shares in AI companies have skyrocketed.
The delicate situation surrounding Taiwan, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, is likely to be a central focus at Thursday’s summit. The island nation fears that Trump’s visit could weaken the U.S.’s role as a protective power. China regards the democratically governed island as its own territory and does not rule out an invasion. Beijing repeatedly makes threatening gestures to that effect.
A weakened U.S.—an opportunity for China?
According to the “Wall Street Journal,” concern is growing within the U.S. government that it might not be able to come to Taiwan’s aid in an emergency. This is because the war with Iran is also a massive war of attrition. The U.S. has already fired thousands of missiles. It could take six years to replenish the arsenals.
China expert Weber does not, however, view an invasion as “imminent”; he believes Xi Jinping is primarily concerned with appearances at the meeting. The Chinese leader will seize every opportunity to portray his country as “on equal footing with the U.S.” After all, the People’s Republic wants to advance economically and potentially replace the U.S. as the world’s number one economy.
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