Trump and Xi Jinping held summit but failed to reach a major statement on core issues

So far, the leaders’ summit between Trump and Xi Jinping has failed to issue any major policy announcements on hot topics such as artificial intelligence, Taiwan, and trade.

Whether it was a personal pick-up or a grand dinner, Trump obviously tried hard to show the outside world that he valued Xi Jinping and the good relationship between the two. However, it is questionable whether Xi Jinping accepts this kind of "personalized diplomacy".

"Trump's 'personalized diplomacy' is a one-sided construct - one that exists mainly in his own imagination. He may believe that his personal friendship with Xi Jinping is a key factor in shaping U.S.-China relations, but there is almost no evidence to support this claim," Aurelio Insisa, a senior analyst at the Mercator Center for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin, told DW.

Despite Trump and Xi's "friendly overtures," the two countries "remain locked in fierce competition" in areas such as trade, technology, Taiwan, defense, rare earths and industrial policy, Daniel Russel of the Asia Society Policy Institute told AFP.

The Taiwan issue did not become the focus of the summit

At nearly every Trump-Xi summit, there have been concerns that the transactional US president will use his support for Taiwan as leverage to strike a deal with Beijing.

Such concerns have been exacerbated by Trump's delay in a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan. After the May summit, Trump called the arms sales a "good bargaining chip."

Dominic Chiu, senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, told Deutsche Welle that he expects "the arms sales to Taiwan may face delays in order to maintain the Sino-US trade truce."

Taiwan's Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Chi-chung stressed on Saturday (September 26) that due to continued communication between Taiwan and the United States and the stance of cross-party U.S. lawmakers, the Taiwan government is currently not worried about the wavering of U.S. support and arms sales policies for Taiwan. He also said that it is in the national interest of the United States to sell arms to Taiwan and maintain its freedom and the world's semiconductor supply.

Wang Hongren, a professor of political science at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, told Reuters that according to his observation, Xi Jinping did not seem to directly mention the issue of arms sales, and the Taiwan issue did not become the focus of the summit. "Looking at the results, a lot of the bad things we expected to happen didn't happen," he said.

“The current trend of Sino-US relations continues to be beneficial to China”

At a White House dinner on Thursday, Xi Jinping said that "realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again go hand in hand." He had made a similar statement when Trump visited Beijing in May.

However, analysts believe that behind similar remarks, the trend in Beijing's eyes has not changed, that is, the world order led by the United States is declining, which is the so-called "big change unseen in a century."

"This summit proves that the current direction of bilateral relations continues to be beneficial to China," Insisa, an analyst at the Mercator China Research Center, told DW.

He said that since Trump returned to the White House and announced a global tariff war in April 2025, "China has refined its strategy to deal with Trump." He added, "For now, Beijing has found a way to keep the Trump administration engaged while avoiding substantive action on the most pressing issues such as artificial intelligence governance, trade relations and export controls."

The next "special Xi-Xi meeting" is expected to be held during the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, in November this year. By then, these issues will likely still be on the negotiating table, and Xi Jinping has the patience to wait.