Xi Jinping’s first goal for the summit was likely to bolster his political standing inside China. It is in the nature of Marxist-Leninist dictatorships that the man at the top feels paranoia. Stephen Kotkin’s wonderful biographical series on Stalin, and the book about Mao by Mao’s physician Li Zhisui, show that phenomenon clearly. Xi fears that rivals — actual, potential and imaginary — might do him in, be it gradually or suddenly. He is vulnerable. In recent years, parts of his economy have been sagging, unemployment and urban malaise are rising, and high-level purges, notably in the military, signal but do not explain major skirmishes at the top.

The summit brought spectacular panoply — with dancing children, wide red carpets and a U.S. president calling him a great man — all on television. Just what Xi needed, at home.

Perry Link is professor emeritus of East Asian Studies at Princeton University.

The summit’s most significant long-term impact may be the perception in Beijing that a temporary strategic window on Taiwan has opened. While the summit itself did not formally alter U.S. Taiwan policy, President Trump’s subsequent comments suggesting that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan could be negotiated with Beijing injected new uncertainty into Washington’s commitment to Taipei. If Chinese leaders view Trump’s position as uniquely favorable — but not representative of a lasting bipartisan shift in U.S. policy — they may feel pressure to act more aggressively while conditions appear advantageous. That does not necessarily mean an invasion is imminent, but it could encourage expanded gray-zone coercion, greater military and diplomatic pressure, and intensified efforts to compel Taipei into negotiations on terms dictated by Beijing. More broadly, treating Taiwan’s security as a potential bargaining chip sends damaging signals to U.S. allies that their security and American commitments may be negotiable in pursuit of a broader deal with Beijing.

Patricia M. Kim is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center and its Center for Asia Policy Studies.

One of the most troubling impacts of the Xi-Trump summit is the way the U.S. appeared to cave by sidelining human rights from bilateral discourse. While President Trump said he raised the cases of Pastor Jin Mingri and Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai, before visiting China he compared the latter to James Comey, justifying why Xi would not want to release him. Unlike with predecessors going back to President Carter, there is no evidence Trump raised wider concerns about China’s human rights record, including current persecution of religious and ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs and Tibetans or crackdowns on fundamental freedoms, including in Hong Kong. This gives the PRC license to continue horrific and systematic human rights abuses against the Chinese people. It will take a president committed to rule of law and standing up to dictators, rather than supplicating them, to recover U.S. credibility on human rights in China.

Uzra Zeya is president and CEO at Human Rights First and former under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights at the State Department.

It is important to acknowledge the significance of President Trump raising two prominent political prisoners — Jimmy Lai and Pastor Jin Mingri, both of whom my organization is advocating for — directly with Xi Jinping. Such action could, at first blush, appear inconsistent with the administration’s emphasis on an “America First” foreign policy. However, these cases involve precisely the two foundational rights mentioned in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy — freedom of religion (Pastor Jin) and freedom of speech (Jimmy Lai) — which, not coincidentally, are also both protected in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Many of us in civil society hope that this may signal a recognition that an America First foreign policy includes standing up for American values like freedom of religion and freedom of speech globally, and that the administration might advocate for political prisoners detained for similar reasons in other countries.

Brian Tronic is director of the Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners at Freedom House.

For the first time in history, a U.S. president traveled for a summit meeting to China as a supplicant, rather than demandeur. The Chinese president played his part, as Xi Jinping received Donald Trump like a ruling emperor meeting one of his subjects. Xi redefined the terms of the Sino-U.S. relationship from a previous insistence that Beijing sought “win-win cooperation” to a new phase of “constructive strategic stability.” But this time, it would be China who determined what behavior contributed to stability and where the red lines would be drawn. For Xi, that line was Taiwan, which he defined, according to a spokesperson, as “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” while warning the United States not to take actions that could result in “clashes and even conflicts.”

Commentators have heralded this era as a “new détente.” It is nothing of the sort. Xi wants predictability, at least for so long as Trump is in power. He is willing to provide the mercurial president with some economic goods — buying new aircraft and loads of soybeans — that Trump can tout as big wins back home. But Xi is setting the terms of the relationship, not Trump or the U.S. And that will have lasting impact on the world going forward.

Ivo Daalder is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center.

The Trump-Xi summit seemed to largely preserve the current detente on export controls — locking in a status quo that is profoundly favorable to China, at a time when export controls have never been more important to the United States.

Since China put in place an extremely broad export control regime for rare earth minerals and magnets in October 2025, the United States has entirely refrained from imposing new export controls on China, and has even loosened existing controls. China is taking advantage of this detente by exploiting loopholes in existing U.S. controls to catch up to the United States in AI: It is continuing to buy advanced U.S. and allied chipmaking equipment, smuggle large numbers of banned AI chips via Southeast Asia, and remotely access controlled AI chips via the cloud.

Meanwhile, AI is rapidly defining the geopolitical threat landscape. Washington is now individually approving which U.S. and allied companies get access to the most advanced U.S. AI models due to concerns about how powerful they are. But it is doing nothing to stop China from acquiring the tools it needs to build these models.

Although Beijing has promised not to block U.S. access to rare earths, it does not appear ready to completely lift its export controls. The United States retains massive leverage over China — given China’s heavy reliance on U.S. technology and exposure to the U.S. dollar — which the administration can and should use to compel China to drop its rare earths export controls entirely, while also closing loopholes in critical U.S. AI-related controls. But it is not willing to use that leverage, and instead effectively agreed to extend a detente that in the best-case scenario trades the world’s most advanced technologies for a bunch of rocks — and in the worst case would trade them for nothing at all.

Chris McGuire is a senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

President Trump may be recognized by future historians as the American president who persuaded the U.S. to pragmatically accept the return of China as a great power. He has even acknowledged that China’s peaceful rise has been a remarkable development. He told former British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, “Isn’t it incredible, they’ve become so powerful without firing a shot.” Trump has also realistically acknowledged that we live in a G2 world.

The challenge for Trump is that the Washington establishment refuses to accept China as a peer. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that China must be stopped. The real fight on China policy won’t be between Presidents Trump and Xi. It will be between Trump and the D.C. establishment. If he can restrain this hawkish establishment and sustain his pragmatic engagement with China over the next two and a half years, Trump will be remembered for the creation of a new G2 world, just as Nixon will always be remembered for his visit to China.

Kishore Mahbubani is a former Singaporean ambassador and former United Nations Security Council president. He is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and is the author of “Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy.”

The Trump-Xi summit generated more spectacle than substance. Nevertheless, the main long-term impact of the summit will be the solidification of Beijing’s view that China is now a geopolitical peer to the United States.

Building the material power to achieve this status — and forcing the world to recognize it — has been the central project of Xi’s tenure. The Chinese Communist Party’s one-line version of the country’s history under party rule asserts: Under Mao China “stood up,” under Deng the country grew rich, and now under Xi it has become strong and can take “center stage.” The summit appeared to substantiate that framing.

U.S.-China diplomacy is stabilizing and essential for managing challenges like AI and nuclear weapons. The net effect of diplomacy, though, depends on the substance of what Washington brings to the table and the leverage and coalition it wields. Trump’s approach likely left Xi believing China’s strength has forced a mellowing of the U.S. stance toward Beijing.

Jacob Stokes is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Center for a New American Security’s Indo-Pacific Security Program.

Whatever one makes of Trump and Xi’s summit, its most durable legacy will likely be structural: new forums — a Board of Trade and a Board of Investment — for managing the world’s most consequential economic relationship. Such mechanisms matter because they reduce the risk of unilateral shocks and their escalation through tit-for-tat measures. This is not the first time such mechanisms have been put in place, but they are especially important in a relationship that has recently been characterized by trade wars and restrictions on critical goods. Despite years of decoupling, both sides are acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: Each still needs the other to prosper.

Anita Kellogg is an assistant professor at the National Defense University’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy.

At the summit, the United States doubled down on a G2 framework for bilateral relations, in which China should be treated as a key partner in solving international challenges. This contrasts with dominant perspectives in the first Trump and Biden administrations, which approached China primarily as a source of strategic challenges that could be best addressed through competition. In a May 17 fact sheet, the White House characterized the summit’s strategic agenda as exclusively collaborative, celebrating consensus on Iran, North Korea and a new bilateral schema termed a “constructive relationship of strategic stability.” However, this cooperative orientation may not be sustainable. China will continue to compete with the United States regardless of whether the United States competes back. Merely four days after Trump departed China, Xi hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin for a state visit in Beijing, where the two leaders released a statement condemning U.S. actions in Venezuela and Iran, as well as the Arctic and the South China Sea.

Henrietta Levin is a senior fellow and the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Trump-Xi summit did not resolve any fundamental issues in the U.S.-China relationship, but it did set the stage for additional senior-level meetings over the next six months. In the run-up to those engagements, Beijing will pressure President Trump to delay, divide or downgrade any arms sales package to Taiwan. Meanwhile, Xi will likely dangle more substantial trade deals or investment announcements prior to his potential U.S. visit ahead of the midterm elections. This will become a key litmus test of whether the administration is willing to trade economic promises for security interests, revealing not only its priorities, but also the credibility of U.S. commitments in Asia.

Zack Cooper is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies U.S. strategy in Asia.