Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump on Thursday wrapped up a meeting in Beijing after about two hours of discussions focusing on trade, Taiwan and other differences in the US-China relationship.
In a closed-door meeting, Xi told Trump that if Taiwan is handled well, US-China relations “will enjoy overall stability,” according to a readout of their bilateral talks published by the official Xinhua news agency.
If not, however, the two countries risk “clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” Xi was reported to have said.
The US and China should be “partners rather than rivals,” Xi told Trump ahead of their bilateral talks.
“I always believed that the common interests between China and the US outweigh their differences,” Xi said. “Cooperation benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both.”
The leaders offered warm words about each other and hope for the future of US-China relations as they opened their bilateral talks.
But Xi sounded more cautionary about what lies ahead for the world’s biggest economic powers.
“Cooperation benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both,” Xi said. “The two countries should be partners rather than rivals, achieve success together and pursue common prosperity, and chart a correct path for major-country relations in the new era.”
In remarks welcoming Trump, Xi name-checked an ancient Greek historian to express his hopes that the US and China can avoid conflict, saying that history, the world and its people were asking “whether the two countries can transcend the “Thucydides Trap” and forge a new model for relations between major powers.
“He was using a term that’s popular in foreign policy studies, referring to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established power, the result is often war.
It comes from Thucydides’ account of the destructive Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, in which he remarked that “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that rise engendered in Sparta, that made war inevitable.”
The Chinese leader in his opening remarks at the summit underscored the importance of the moment for the two world powers and said the question before China and the United States is “whether the two countries can work together to meet challenges and bring greater stability to the world.”
“Can we, in the interest of the well-being of our two peoples and the future of humanity, build a brighter future together for our bilateral relations?” Xi said.
Trump only made glancing allusion to past difficulties in his yearslong relationship with Xi.
Those include two trade wars, tensions over US support for Taiwan — and Trump's impatience with Beijing over the flow precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.
