China wants Trump to roll out the red carpet and roll over

A rare U.S. delegation recently visited China and met with dozens of officials from the foreign ministry, the military, the economy, think tanks, and businesses. The delegation briefed a small group of reporters, including Newsweek, on their trip late last week. The main takeaway from these meetings was that a confident Chinese Communist Party is betting that "summitry" is the best way to manage its most important foreign relationship. Both Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have openly pursued this approach for years, referring to it as "head-of-state leadership" or "leader-led leadership." The White House has confirmed that Xi's state visit to the U.S., his first in 11 years, begins on September 24, but did not answer questions about China's tactics in managing Trump or what the President hopes to achieve.

China's growing use of summitry is a deliberate tactic to avoid answering hard questions on a granular level regarding issues that roil the U.S.-China relationship, including trade, technology, sanctions lists, and military tensions in Asia. This was a key finding for the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a bipartisan legislative agency. When the delegation pressed Chinese officials for specifics on various disputes, the response was often that such matters might be addressed at the upcoming September summit. While China says it seeks "stability," referencing an agreement from Trump's May state visit to build "constructive strategic stability," it also acknowledges that "structural contradictions" will not resolve easily. This suggests the summit serves as a placeholder for China to control the public narrative while continuing its existing policies.

The risk, according to USCC officials, is that summitry becomes cover for continued malign behavior. Since Trump's trip, the U.S. has observed concerning activity, including new State Council economic and trade decrees, continued coercion against Taiwan with ramped-up Coast Guard patrols, and coercion in the South China Sea directed at the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally. Chinese officials view countries that are not the U.S. or China as "meddling middle powers" that China would like the U.S. to drop, with Japan being a key target of Beijing's ire. Despite multiple meetings at various levels of government and with different organizations, the commissioners came away with few specifics, noting that China sees summitry as the mechanism that brings stability.

The delegation observed a significant disconnect between China's public and private messaging, a concept captured by the Chinese phrase "inside and outside are different." Publicly, the message is a desire for summitry and stability. Privately, there is an expectation that China will continue its current behaviors, including putting pressure on middle powers like Japan. The commissioners noted China's intense interest in institutionalizing management through processes like a board of trade and investment. Furthermore, Xi Jinping is focused on messaging his leadership on the global stage, particularly regarding artificial intelligence, to define what success looks like.