China is being termed victorious in deal with DC

For Chinese President Xi Jinping, a landmark meeting with US President Donald Trump expected this week is a moment to showcase something Beijing has long sought: Beijing standing as an equal to Washington DC on the global stage, according to news coverage.

The US president’s trade war against China has challenged Xi’s drive for growth and innovation, but it’s also given Beijing the unintended gift of a bright spotlight under which to flex its economic strength.

As much of the rest of the world scrambled to flatter Trump and negotiate down global tariffs he unleashed this spring, China fought back with its own measures – until both sides were forced to the table for a truce.

After US rules hit China’s access to American technology and targeted its shipping industry, Beijing fired back by announcing a sweeping expansion of export controls on critical rare earth minerals – a move that rattled Washington and pushed Trump to threaten to impose an additional 100% tariffs on Chinese goods.

Both sides have appeared to climb down from that latest escalation following eleventh-hour trade talks between top negotiators this weekend in Malaysia.

Xi and Trump are now set to meet on the sidelines of an international summit in South Korea Thursday – their first face-to-face meeting of Trump’s second term, where they’re expected to agree to a framework for managing their economic ties.
It’s not yet clear what each side has agreed to concede to get to that point – and this is just one touchstone in a complex and volatile competition between superpowers.

But it will also be a moment where Xi is entering the room after cementing a new reality in US-China relations: China will negotiate, but it won’t be cowed.

Instead of the US and China working together on global threats as a “G2” of the world’s most powerful economies, Beijing sees a US that aims to hinder its rise with tariffs, high-tech export controls and political friction.

Xi said on Thursday that the framework agreed in Malaysia had “provided the necessary conditions for our meeting today.”

Dan Caldwell, a former senior adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said Trump deserved credit for pursuing a pragmatic China policy that maintained what he said was strategic ambiguity while taking steps to restore important military capabilities to deter Chinese aggression.
“A lot of folks wanted to assume that he was going to be reflexively hawkish on China,” Caldwell said of Trump. “That hasn’t been the case.”
But Caldwell cautioned against expecting a breakthrough in Busan. “I don’t think the overall push hinges on one meeting,” Caldwell said.