Can Trump make a deal with Xi on Taiwan? The question will define US-China relations

Donald Trump left the APEC summit in Seoul, where he had met Chinese President Xi Jinping, in an ebullient mood. Out of 10, “I’d say the meeting was a 12”, he told reporters aboard Air Force One after his negotiation with the Chinese leader. Though he used less exuberant language, Xi was also cautiously warm in his assessment of the meeting.

Both presidents had reason to be pleased. Each got what he wanted: a compromise which doesn’t cut off options, at least for now. Both achieved their specific aims: for the US side, the removal of many of the restrictions on Chinese exports of rare earths; for the Chinese, lower tariffs on their goods entering the US. They also managed to put off some of the hardest questions on how the US-China relationship will develop in the next few years.

Their similarity of intent was masked by their very different personal styles. Trump is freewheeling, improvisational, unpredictable. This is not to say that he lacks direction: for this meeting, he had a key goal of getting an agreement on fentanyl and rare earths, and he achieved both. Xi, in contrast, is tightly choreographed, sticking to talking points and bland language. (There is only one recorded incident of Xi making a joke during his relationship with the US: on a visit to America in September 2015, he declared that his anti-corruption campaign purging the Chinese Communist Party was “no House of Cards”, referring to the skulduggerous television show about a scheming US president). Trump has been warm in his language about Xi, calling him “respected” and referring to him as the “king of China”. Xi has said little about Trump personally.

Compare this disbalanced personal dynamic with each president’s relationship with Vladimir Putin. Putin is clearly able to adapt to Trump’s fixations and bugbears, as when he sympathised with the US President’s dislike of mail-in ballots (even though Russia makes wide use of digital remote voting), and assured him that he would not have invaded Ukraine in 2022 if Trump had remained president. Yet it’s hard to see Putin having a conversation with any Western leader, not just Trump, where the surface level conversation and deeper intent really match.

The relationship between Xi and Putin, in contrast, seems genuinely quite close. Xi’s respect for Russia is not purely instrumental. His father Xi Zhongxun grew up in China’s revolutionary movement under the influence of Russian and Soviet literature, and seems to have passed on some of that interest to his son. (Joseph Torigian’s superb biography of Xi Zhongxun, The Party’s Interests Come First, notes Xi’s knowledge of relatively obscure Russian novels.) Putin, of course, has his own nationalistic view of Russian culture and its importance, and is willing to flatter China, although he seems to have little specific to say about its culture or society. This year, official records show that the two leaders have talked on the phone frequently and met at various international gatherings. Indeed, Trump posted disapprovingly on Truth Social during the Victory Day parade in Beijing in September, accusing Xi, Putin and Kim Jong-un of conspiring against America. There’s no record of a Chinese reply. Putin at least sometimes tries to reply to Trump in his own idiom. Xi never does.

On the core issue of trade, both gunslingers have put their weapons away — for now. China has made it clear that it’s able and willing to use restrictions on the export of rare earths and critical minerals to squeeze the US and other Western powers in the most sensitive parts of their supply chains. The US has likewise indicated that it’s prepared to take the hit to consumers that comes from restrictions on China by pushing tariffs up to unbearable rates. The possibility of mutual destruction has led to a temporary deal.

But the negotiations are nowhere near finished. The Trump administration says that China has agreed to restrict the export of fentanyl, which is responsible for severe opiate addiction in the US. Yet it’s hard to know how enforceable the fentanyl ban really is. In the end, fentanyl production in China, unlike the production of EVs or solar panels, is not subject to governmental oversight, and it’s going to be hard to track how much China really controls the drug. The export restrictions and tariffs have been lifted for just one year.

In South Korea, Trump and Xi managed to avoid some of the biggest questions that divide them. Perhaps the biggest issue is Taiwan, where policy seems to be changing at some speed on both sides. Over the years, Xi has made ever-louder comments about the need to “resolve” the Taiwan question — that is, its unification with the mainland — in public speeches. China’s military spending rose to over $314 billion in 2024, and the PLA Navy is developing its capacities for the kind of amphibious assault that would be needed for an invasion. While logistics do still make that particular outcome unlikely, Taiwan is nevertheless vulnerable to a blockade, as well as to cyberattacks.

For the past half century, even though the US switched recognition of China from Taipei to Beijing, the US has maintained a strong commitment to help Taiwan defend itself. Under the first Trump administration, senior figures such as the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger made it clear that they regarded the defence of Taiwan as a top political priority. Joe Biden stated several times during his presidency that the US would defend Taiwan: he was so emphatic in this claim that his staff had to walk back the assurance several times to restore the “strategic ambiguity” that was supposed to define policy.

Under the new Trump administration, however, the position on Taiwan seems more fluid. A planned shipment of some $400 million worth of arms to Taiwan last summer was halted by the administration. Taiwan president Lai Ching-te’s attempt to transit the United States on his way to Latin America (where there are still a few states that recognise Taiwan) was also vetoed earlier this year. Of course, the US still provides plenty of military assistance to Taiwan in service of what has become known as a “porcupine” strategy for self-defence. But China seems less inclined to tolerate Taiwan’s status quo, and many in Taiwan are unsure that the US will offer them long-term protection if the situation changes suddenly.

Trump left Seoul declaring that he would visit China in April next year. So far, the Chinese side has been silent on a date. Clearly neither party would think it worth a presidential visit if there was nothing to sign off on. And many of the issues look intractable on both sides. The US has to decide whether Taiwan is worth defending: say no, and a democracy could be destroyed and American power in the Pacific permanently diminished; say yes and thousands of American lives could be lost in yet another far-off war. Meanwhile, China wants access to US high tech: American security officials are sceptical about the wisdom of allowing the export of high-level chips, while the tech magnates who are central to the new administration are keen to expand their market in China.

Above all, China wants to know whether the recent change in US foreign policy is real. Recently, the term “involution” (neijuan) has become popular in Chinese internet usage, referring to an increasingly inward turn of many of the youth in China’s competitive society. Today, China’s leaders are trying to work out whether the “involution” in the US is real, and if so, how that can be made to boost China’s rise to becoming the global power that sets the rules. The Seoul meeting did not come close to answering those questions. Perhaps the summit in Beijing next spring will do.

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