The coming summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump offers a window to stabilise bilateral ties through trade deals, but former diplomats and business figures have urged the leaders to move beyond commerce during their talks.
At a forum held by the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) in Beijing on Sunday, analysts and former officials called on the leaders to address issues such as healthcare, climate change, technological decoupling and AI governance.
One former diplomat also warned of a “malpractice-like” lack of summit preparation that might prevent the two leaders from making progress on complex security and people-to-people issues beyond trade deals.
The summit, originally planned for late March, has been rescheduled to mid-May due to the US-Israel war on Iran.
Roberta Lipson, founder of United Family Healthcare, China’s first foreign-funded private hospital, said she was confident the summit next month would produce “a number of transaction wins, with probably soybean and aircraft orders and further tariff reductions, which will help stabilise the mood in the business community”.
But Lipson, also chair emeritus of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, urged the two sides to strive for progress beyond commerce to solidify stability in US-China relations.
“Healthcare, climate change, data security and AI governance – [these are] areas where cooperation is not only possible but will be mutually beneficial and where the cost of missed opportunities could be extraordinarily high,” she told the panel.
“Western pharma increasingly sees China not just as a market, but as a source of innovation,” Lipson added. “Chinese patients, meanwhile, still want timely access to Western breakthroughs without worrying about export controls or prohibited tariffs.”
David Meale, practice head of Eurasia Group’s China team and former deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Beijing, called for artificial intelligence (AI) to be a defining issue for the summit.
Stressing AI’s “exponentially” growing capabilities, he warned of urgent vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure.
“We’re looking at potentially the end of digital privacy, whether that’s on the military front, personal IDs or corporate security. These are huge outcomes,” Meale said, adding he had not heard much talk of a big AI agenda.
“I believe it is very important that we impress upon our leaders to take their new-found cooperation and drive towards stability that we are seeing here in 2026, and take every opportunity to expand that into the AI realm,” he said.
Stressing AI developments coming from private companies, Meale said “everybody needs to be in this conversation”.
Speaking to the same panel, Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on US-China Relations, said current bilateral disagreements were “continuing to generate considerable uncertainty in the digital economy and across associated supply chains, leading to significant cost inefficiencies”.
The rivalry between Washington and Beijing has expanded from the security front to the tech sector to include semiconductor bans and the battle over critical minerals, which are indispensable to the green economy and the military. As the US tightens restrictions on China’s access to high-end AI chips, Beijing has responded by leveraging its control over the processing of rare earth elements.
Orlins said digital economy experts in both the US and China agreed the current uncertainty was pushing the technology sector towards decoupling, and a failure to establish global standards and trade rules was blocking cooperation.
He added that if the two sides could move beyond short-term political pressure and rebuild trust, they could unlock a “win-win” outcome.
He called for the formal creation of technical working groups following the May summit.
“The Trump-Xi meetings have given us breathing room where we can create some areas where we can really, really cooperate, but it’s only going to happen if both governments bring technical experts into these negotiations,” he said.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that we’re not going to see results next month, but we hope we will see the creation of working groups, which will then allow us to begin to set paths for agreement on how to work these issues.”
The most stinging critique of the summit’s prospects came from Susan Shirk, research professor at the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. She also served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs during the administration of former US president Bill Clinton.
Shirk stressed there was a lack of proper groundwork for the coming summit. She said this amounted to “diplomatic malpractice” that could hollow out the potential for a successful meeting.
“What I find really frustrating about the current situation is the absolute lack of diplomatic preparation for these visits. I know the Chinese side of the foreign ministry is very frustrated, because the obstacle is definitely on the US side,” she said.
Trump and Xi could meet up to four times this year, as the Chinese president is expected to reciprocate the US leader’s visit, and the two might also have a chance to talk at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Shenzhen and the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Miami.
“I think you will get some discussions about trade,” Shirk said. “You already get the ability to sustain the move on truce between the two countries, but security issues, people-to-people ties – all the other dimensions of US-China relations, which these two leaders could be and should be discussing – I don’t see any indication that they will get to it.”
“It’s really [a] tragic loss of opportunity,” she said.
Despite these hurdles, experts focused on a gradual path forward.
Zhu Hong, former minister-counsellor for commercial affairs at the Chinese embassy in the US, said the China-US relationship was like “a patient recovering from a severe illness”.
“Nursing it back to health will be a gradual process.”
Zhu advocated for an “action-for-action” approach, using “positive and negative lists” to define the boundaries of competition and identify the “greatest common denominator” for cooperation.
“The complementary nature of our two economies continues to be stronger than the rivalry,” Zhu said, encouraging the business community to raise a “big voice” in support of long-term stability. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
