Some good things did come out of the meeting, such as boards of trade and investment to manage economic ties between the two countries. Trump will also host Xi for a summit meeting in the US in September, so the momentum of dialogue will continue. But there was limited progress on bridging disagreements over trade imbalances, technology controls, each side’s military presence in the Western Pacific and Taiwan.
The relationship between China and the US, the world’s two superpowers, is the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world. So, the very fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted US President Donald Trump in Beijing for the first full-fledged summit meeting between the two countries was good news.
This came after a decade of growing tensions and misunderstandings, marked by ill-tempered rhetoric, a trade war and other aggressive measures such as export controls hurled against each other. As Winston Churchill said many years ago, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war”.
