Hosting President Donald Trump on a state visit to China in November 2017, President Xi Jinping threw out the red carpet. He did so both figuratively and literally. Trump was subject to a lavish display of deference and praise. He was feted by Chinese media and Communist Party activists. But these theatrics were not motivated by Xi's personal affection for the American president. Instead, they represented a bold effort to stroke Trump's ego and earn his enabling of Xi's foreign policy agenda.
To Trump's credit, he showed only a temporary impulse to provide Xi with policy rewards in return for the Chinese leader's pomp. On defense, trade, and diplomacy, the first Trump administration abandoned the Obama administration's thinly veiled appeasement of Beijing, instead setting the United States on a necessary multi-generational struggle to counter China's ambition for global hegemony. Xi's ultimate ambition is to supplant the U.S. democratic capitalist rule of law-based international system with a Chinese-led order of feudal mercantilism. That is to say, an order in which prosperity, peace, and political sovereignty exist only at the whims of the Chinese Communist Party.
China denies this. Beijing says it wants only meaningful cooperation that facilitates "win-win" results. In an editorial last week, China's state media Global Times outlet lauded how "there is an expectation that the new US government will truly abandon the 'zero-sum game' and Cold War mentality, deepening practical cooperation with China and creating a new starting point for mutually beneficial China-US relations."
Rhetoric aside, China's hostile global ambitions are easily apparent except to the most deluded or bought-off sycophants. They are apparent in the endemic espionage China conducts against America, costing hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy every year. They are apparent in China's military harassment of Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan and its claims over the near entirety of the South China Sea. They are apparent in China's leveraging of debt to exert control over the governments and resources of governments from Africa to Latin America. They are apparent in China's treatment of its own people. Lucky Chinese are subjected to ubiquitous surveillance and the risk of arbitrary arrest. Unlucky Chinese, such as the Uyghur minority, are sent to gulags of despair.
But now, with Trump back in power, China will again attempt to manipulate the U.S. president. Xi wants to extract concessions from Trump in key areas such as economics, technology, diplomacy, and defense. How might he attempt to do so?
On the economic front, China's first priority is to avoid new American tariffs. The Chinese economy is already in a precarious position. Youth unemployment is soaring, debt is high, and consumer spending is low. Further complicating Xi's ambitions, Chinese birth rates portend a demographic crisis.
Yet the Chinese are fully aware that Trump has a personal and professional affinity for tariffs. In turn, we should expect early overtures by China to increase purchases of U.S. exports from the agricultural sector. Xi will hope that these purchases might earn Trump's favor in a way that is relatively low cost to Chinese interests but also allows Trump to broadcast an early political success to Americans. As an extension, Xi will hope that this will dilute Trump's interest in tariffs.
The problem for China is that its economic agenda is already likely in inherent conflict with Trump's. Consider that where Trump wants to strengthen U.S. manufacturing and increase U.S. exports, China is engaged in a global effort to dump excess goods into foreign markets. This is most obvious with Chinese electric vehicle exports, a dynamic that has led even the normally appeasement-minded European Union to introduce anti-dumping measures.
China is also in an unfortunate position with Trump in terms of its relationship with Mexico. After all, Trump has made no secret of his interest in significant U.S. policy shifts in relation to Mexico. Warning of coming tariffs on Mexican imports, Trump is apparently set to pursue a shadow war against the Mexican drug cartels. This is a concern for China in that it has invested heavy sums relocating manufacturing plants to Mexico in order to skirt U.S. tariffs on exports from mainland China.
Then there's the technology factor. As underlined by the vast market disruption caused by the unveiling of China's DeepSeek artificial intelligence app, the Chinese are both adept and determined at innovation surprises. Still, export restrictions on the highest-grade U.S. semiconductor chips continue to pose a major challenge for Beijing. China might be able to put out cheaper products than U.S. firms, including impressive products such as DeepSeek. But Beijing's problem is that it cannot match U.S. investment and capitalist innovation related to artificial intelligence and other new technologies.
At the same time, Xi's obsessive focus on state security and loyalty to the Communist Party means that he is loath to empower the private sector to lead the charge in terms of technology research and development. Further, the efficacy of the Chinese state sector is hamstrung by officials whose fear of upsetting party elites outweighs their interest in success.
All of this makes it crucial for Xi that Trump adopt a more conciliatory approach in relation to export restrictions. To that end, Xi will attempt to offer Trump concessions, which the president can present domestically as significant wins. It's possible, for example, that Trump's threats to introduce secondary sanctions on China over its continued purchase of Russian energy exports might lead Xi to reduce his support for Russia's economy and its military effort in Ukraine. Xi might believe that this de facto enabling of Trump's effort to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table will be so valuable to Trump it might earn his reciprocity even on semiconductor chips. Again, the key here is that Xi will attempt to manipulate Trump in the lowest cost way that best serves China's interests.
Of course, Xi's interests extend beyond economics and technology. No interest is more sacrosanct to Xi than his desire to return Taiwan to a place under the Communist Party flag. Already the most powerful Chinese Communist leader since Mao Zedong, Xi regards reunification with Taiwan as his key test of destiny. The existence of this democratic island nation is regarded by the Chinese Communists as a humiliation that cannot stand if the Chinese Communist Party is to become the next global superpower. To that end, Xi has told his People's Liberation Army to be ready to conquer Taiwan successfully by 2027. But weakened by decades of defense underspending and far outnumbered by Chinese forces and weapons, Taiwan would stand little chance of defeating an invasion or embargo without U.S. help.
That makes Xi very keen to do everything possible to persuade Trump to reduce his support for Taiwan and stay out of any war should it come. Again, Xi will attempt to manipulate Trump's penchant for transactional deal-making here. While Xi knows that Trump is skeptical of major foreign military interventions, he does not want to see the new American commander in chief echo the sentiments of the man who just left office: Joe Biden pledged four times that he would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. If Trump is willing to give ground on Taiwan, Xi will almost certainly increase his imports of U.S. goods and support U.S. foreign policy priorities in other areas. The point cannot be emphasized enough: Taiwan means everything to Xi.
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For Trump, then, the key test of successfully navigating his second-term relations with China will center on the president's ability to see through Xi's gifts and focus on protecting keystone U.S. interests. There's no question that Xi will attempt to manipulate the American president.
Only Trump can decide whether he'll succeed.