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Kawala Xie

When Chinese President Xi Jinping met Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago for the first time in April 2017, the summit was seen as a key moment to build personal rapport following the tariff threats made during Trump’s first presidential campaign.
The meeting at Trump’s Florida estate reflected Beijing’s willingness to move quickly in engaging an unpredictable new US president and helped underscore how leader-level diplomacy was once viewed as essential to stabilising ties.
Fast forward to Trump’s second term, where there is no apparent prospect of any meeting, even though he had expressed his willingness to meet Xi during his first 100 days back in the White House.
Instead China has become more assertive towards Trump, reacting to his tariffs with a series of countermeasures of its own and indicating that it has no intention of backing down.
It has also become much more fiery in its rhetoric, repeatedly attacking American “bullying”, while seeking to rally international support for its stance both among its neighbours and by reaching out to long-term US allies such as Japan and South Korea.
Although some analysts believe Beijing may be biding its time to work out what Trump’s strategic intentions are, this approach may also be an indication of a hardening of attitudes this time round – possibly as a result of its experiences during his first term.


Some say the Chinese leadership is much less willing to make concessions because of Trump’s volatility and the way he responded to their efforts to cooperate with the 2018 trade war in search of further concessions.
But the lack of communication also increases the risk that the two sides will misjudge the others’ intentions and with neither wanting to appear weak or back down, some analysts believe there is a greater risk the situation will be allowed to escalate because of simple miscalculations.
Zhang Baohui, an international relations professor at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, said Beijing now thought that Trump was unpredictable “and therefore any understandings with him could be reversed later”.
He said Beijing had “eagerly engaged him in his first year in the White House”, with Xi visiting the US and then welcoming Trump to Beijing later in the year.
“These meetings, and China’s support for the US North Korea-related initiatives in the United Nations, led China to believe that it had established a cooperative relationship with Trump. However, the first China tariff war in 2018 took the Chinese by surprise,” Zhang said.
In 2018, Trump began imposing tariffs on more than US$300 billion worth of imported Chinese goods and pushed Beijing to strike a trade agreement.
The resulting phase one deal, signed in 2020, committed China to buy an additional US$200 billion of American goods and services over two years – although that did not happen as a result of the Covid outbreak.
The pandemic further soured relations as Trump blamed China for the outbreak. Meanwhile, his officials increasingly targeted Beijing over human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang with sanctions, prompting retaliatory measures against US politicians and officials that included the current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, a prominent China hawk.
“Many believe that his administration in fact triggered a complete change in US-China relations and nudged it toward a new cold war,” Zhang said.
He added that the appointment of China hawks to key roles “led many in China to think that he will pursue a hardline policy” and this had “deterred” Beijing from engaging with him.
Sun Chenghao, head of the US-EU programme at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said China now held no illusions about Trump and had been preparing for the worst.
“Trump’s unpredictability is now a relatively more predictable factor,” Sun said. “Compared with his first term, China is more composed, especially on trade and tariffs … nothing will particularly surprise us or catch us off guard.”
He added that Beijing had shifted from passively reacting to Trump’s tariffs to fighting back this time, drawing on years of preparation to expand its policy toolkit and improve its economic resilience.
This month China has responded to each of Trump’s tariff announcements with its own measures.
At present, Beijing’s levies on US goods have risen to 125 per cent on top of previous tariffs.
It has also extended its use of non-tariff tools, including export controls on critical minerals that are essential to semiconductors and batteries, further sanctions targeting US firms and new restrictions on American film imports.
Meanwhile, Trump has imposed tariffs totalling 145 per cent on Chinese imports so far this year, bringing the effective tariff rate to about 156 per cent.
According to a fact sheet released by the White House on April 15, China now faces tariffs of up to 245 per cent, when tariffs that were imposed before Trump’s second term in office began are included.
Chinese officials and media have also taken a more aggressive and confident tone, saying the economy can weather the storm, while the authorities have pledged further measures to boost domestic demand – a long-standing policy aim.
Along with this increasing reliance on the domestic economy, Xi has continued to promote his vision of a globalised, multipolar world – in contrast to US protectionism – and court regional partners, including during his recent tour of Southeast Asia.
Despite slapping heavy tariffs on China, Trump has stressed that he is willing to negotiate directly with Xi, for whom he has often expressed admiration.
The pair spoke by phone before Trump returned to the White House, but since then there has been limited contact between the two sides.
China’s foreign policy chief, Wang Yi, and Rubio have also spoken by phone but did not meet when Wang visited New York in February for a United Nations meeting or at the Munich Security Conference that same month.
Although Rubio is still under Chinese sanctions, many analysts believe this is not an insurmountable barrier and say the lack of contact is a matter of choice.
In the economic sphere, Chinese Vice-Premier He Lifeng, who has been appointed to lead trade talks, only had an introductory call with US trade representative Jamieson Greer before Trump announced his first new tariffs.
Zhao Hai, director of the international politics studies department at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ National Institute for Global Strategy, said a leaders’ meeting was unlikely in the near term due to minimal working-level communications.
He added there was no clear channel for the two nations to begin trade talks since Beijing was unclear who could speak for Trump or represent the US position.
Trump claimed this week that trade talks with China were already under way, but Beijing has denied this.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS earlier this month that he was not engaging with China, and nor was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, with contacts being left to the president to handle.

“We don’t know whether Bessent, Greer or Lutnick are leading the conversation on the US side,” Zhao said. “Do they have authorisation [from Trump]? Can they start negotiations with China?”
Ryan Hass, director of the John L. Thornton China Centre at the Brookings Institution, said there was “significant jockeying among senior officials” for the role of lead negotiator with China during Trump’s first term but “nobody is lobbying to gain this role” now.
He added: “Trump is not asking anyone to take on this role. Trump wants to serve as his own lead negotiator.”
Hass, who recently led a delegation to China to meet academics and officials, said the lack of proper communications had left the relationship between the two countries as one marked by “enmity and grievance”.
He said: “Trump and Xi both are proud leaders. Neither wants to be perceived as giving in to pressure from the other. There likely will need to be an outside event or actor to bring the two leaders together. It is difficult to envision the two leaders coming together to meet on their own accord.”
But some analysts say now is the time for backchannels to play their part with Lutnick saying recently that there had been initial discussions “through intermediaries”.
The speed with which Xi’s visit to Mar-A-Largo was arranged in 2017 was in part due to the role of intermediaries such as Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who used backchannels to speak to former ambassador Cui Tiankai.


Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis, said backchannels had also been an “important ingredient” in reaching a trade deal in Trump’s first term.
“If Beijing and Washington want to reach another deal, then both governments would be well served by encouraging such informal channels of communication,” he added.
David Firestein, the chief executive of the George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, said Trump’s second term may be characterised by “surrogate diplomacy”, where political allies unofficially deliver messages.
“That’s certainly a tool that any president has in his or her – up to now, his – toolkit,” Firestein told the Post on the sidelines of the Harvard College China Forum earlier this month.
Steve Daines, a Republican senator from Montana who is close to Trump, met Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing last month, becoming the first American politician to visit China since Trump’s return to office.
Zhao said China would “welcome” such backchannels but warned that setting them up was harder than before.
The conservatives in Trump’s orbit had been avoiding contact with Chinese officials and scholars, which they see as “damaging to their political future”, Zhao said. “If Trump truly wants to cut a deal with China … he needs to actively open those channels, official or not.”
Additional reporting by Ziwen Zhao


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Beijing has shown no signs it wants to make concessions after Trump’s behaviour in his first term soured relations


Beijing has shown no signs it wants to make concessions after Trump’s behaviour in his first term soured relations.


Donald Trump

Xi Jinping

US-China relations

Donald Trump’s China policy

Why China is taking a much tougher stance towards Donald Trump this time round

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beijing has shown no signs it wants to make concessions after Trump’s behaviour in his first term soured relations

Beijing has shown no signs it wants to make concessions after Trump’s behaviour in his first term soured relations