Donald Trump's state visit to China this week underscored the enduring centrality of the US-China relationship to the evolving global order. Nearly nine years after the last US presidential visit to Beijing, and almost a decade into an increasingly adversarial phase in bilateral ties, the meetings over two days between Xi Jinping and Trump represented less a strategic reset and more an exercise in crisis management between two powers acutely aware of the costs of uncontrolled rivalry.
The atmospherics were carefully choreographed. Xi hosted Trump with all the symbolism Beijing reserves for moments of geopolitical significance: meetings at the Great Hall of the People, cultural diplomacy at the Temple of Heaven, and a formal state banquet. Both leaders invoked the language of stability and mutual respect, Xi invoking the 'Thucydides trap' that warns of the possibility of an impending war between a rising power and an established one if relations are allowed to fray. Yet, beneath the ceremonial warmth lay the hard realities of structural competition.
