The Boring Trump-Xi Summit: Boring Is Good

Critics of the May 2026 summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), widely condemned the outcome as being long on pomp and ceremony but short on meaningful substantive results.  They noted that most of the agreements reached, especially on trade and other economic issues, were either preliminary or relatively minor.  There was a virtual consensus among the opinion-shaping elites that Trump had secured no major concessions on either his commercial or his security objectives.

In other words, the outcome of the summit was rather bland and boring.  That criticism may be true, but in international affairs boring is usually good.  It is definitely preferable to the “excitement” of confrontation and crisis.

The one issue that did receive considerable attention from the U.S. news media and foreign policy community was Xi’s admonition to Trump not to let Washington’s support for Taiwan reach the point of causing serious disruption in the bilateral relationship between the United States and the PRC.  That warning, both establishment and more hawkish voices contended, was ominous and confirmed the PRC’s ambition to be Washington’s principal geostrategic rival.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and some of the Journal’s favorite China-bashing columnists did their best to hype the image of Xi attempting to intimidate Trump regarding Taiwan.  Those analysts and other hawks especially criticized the U.S. president for his subsequent comment warning Taiwanese leaders not to pursue formal independence for the island.

However, in terms of substance the brouhaha about Xi’s warning and Trump’s expression of caution was much ado about nothing.  For decades, PRC officials have warned their Taiwanese counterparts against pushing the envelope on independence.  Whenever Taipei has become too assertive on that issue in Beijing’s opinion, the PRC has made emphatic countermoves.  That trend has become especially apparent over the past ten years when two consecutive Taiwanese presidents (Tsai Ing-wen and Lai ching-te) have been members of the officially pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Beijing has displayed its displeasure in two ways.  PRC officials cajole and bribe the handful of small, weak nations in the international community that still recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name) as China’s legitimate government to switch their recognition to the PRC.  Beijing has been increasingly successful in doing so.  During Tsai’s administration, 10 countries severed relations with Taipei.

That outcome is primarily a blow to Taiwan’s pride and the status of its diplomatic corps.  Because of the island’s economic importance (especially in the field of advanced semiconductors) most of the world’s nations are eager to have extensive commercial relations with Taipei, despite the official diplomatic blackout.

Beijing’s other countermeasure, deploying a growing presence of air and naval forces near Taiwan, is far more substantive and worrisome to the island’s leaders than the PRC’s actions in the arena of diplomacy.  The military component has been intensifying over the past decade.

The DPP has long been on record as advocating Taiwan’s formal independence, but the reality is that independence remains a dreamy aspiration, not a real strategy.  Despite his sometimes-militant rhetoric on independence, even the outspoken Lai is cautious about pushing Beijing too far.

Xi’s statement to Trump regarding Taiwan likewise does not appear to signal a substantial, worrisome change in the PRC’s approach.  Indeed, during the first summit meeting between the two leaders in December 2025, Xi apparently assured his counterpart that Beijing would make no change in policy on Taiwan that would upset the status quo during Trump’s term in the White House.

The outcome of the latest summit indicates that neither side wishes to create a confrontation over Taiwan.  To the extent that there are troubling tensions between the United States and the PRC, they have far more to do with the war in Iran than with the Taiwan issue.  Beijing is intent on undermining Washington’s continuing pretensions about being the global hegemon.  In addition, because the PRC is a major oil and natural gas consumer, Chinese authorities are not happy about witnessing a sharp increase in global energy prices and the problems associated with constrained energy supplies. If there was a disappointing outcome from the Xi-Trump summit, especially from the U.S. standpoint, it was the failure to make meaningful progress to narrow the policy differences on that set of issues.

However, for both economic and geostrategic reasons, China has an incentive to continue undermining Washington’s goal of isolating and weakening Iran.  The longer the United States remains bogged down in the ongoing war, the narrower the U.S. economic and military edge over the PRC becomes. Several observers have noted that from a symbolic standpoint, the summit was a solid success for Xi.  China established itself as a fully equal great power to the United States.

Such an observation is quite accurate. However, the summit merely confirmed a long-developing trend.  In terms of economic, diplomatic, and strategic influence, the United States and the PRC have occupied a higher level than any other great power for years already.  The foolish obsession of the U.S. foreign policy and media establishments with Russia and the alleged threat that it poses has unfortunately obscured the extent of China’s achievement for far too many observers.

China, not Russia, is America’s true peer competitor.  Consequently, a boring summit between the leaders of those two leading peer competitors is something that should be welcomed, not scorned.  Despite the crude attempt among opinion shapers in the United States to hype the Taiwan issue as a source of confrontation between Beijing and Washington,  Xi and Trump have apparently succeeded in holding a relatively mundane summit.  We should all be pleased with such an outcome.