Trump’s sharp turn on China

Xi welcoming Trump outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 14. — Kenny Holston/The New York Times

AFTER meeting with China’s top diplomat in Malaysia last summer, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio uttered a line that made few waves at the time but would later help pave the way for an abrupt change.

The United States and China, Rubio said, had an “opportunity here to achieve some strategic stability” and find areas of coo­pe­ration.

He used the phrase again in February while talking about China in the Carib­bean, also to little notice.

Chinese officials picked up on Rubio’s remarks and suggested to their US coun­ter­parts even rosier language to describe ties between the two nations, according to two people with knowledge of the previously unreported diplomacy.

The new phrase – “constructive strategic stability” – was rolled out by both govern­ments during President Donald Trump’s meeting in Beijing in May with the leader of China, Xi Jinping.

Although the language sounds stiff and somewhat vague, such diplomatic terms are important guideposts.

The new catchphrase signals to agencies in both nations, and to other powers, that the United States and China – the world’s two largest economies and most powerful militaries – are looking to work together or limit hostilities.

Trump’s new policy with Beijing has stirred questions and anxieties across Asia, from Delhi to Manila, sending offi­cials in the region scrambling to recali­brate their own approaches to the United States and China.

The signals from the Americans became sharper over a series of official visits to Asia in recent weeks: Trump and his top aides to Beijing; Rubio to India; and Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, to Singa­pore.

At an annual military forum, Hegseth said there was “rightful alarm” in Asia about China’s military build-up and acti­vities, but he also declared, “We respect their ambitions.”

After his meetings in China, Trump effusively praised Xi, calling him a towe­r­ing leader out of “central casting”.

But more importantly, he said the United States and China were forming a “G2” of equal superpowers.

“It’s the two great countries,” he told Fox News.

Current and former officials in the United States and Asia say the message is clear: Trump intends to accommodate China, and other countries should fall in line.

The new policy is a sharp departure from Trump’s aggressive approach during his first term. It comes after China’s retaliation during a trade war last year forced Trump to retreat.

“For now at least, the perspective of the Chinese government is that their relation­ship with the Trump administration is better than they had ever expected,” said Yun Sun, a China scholar at the Stimson Centre, a foreign policy research group.

“They see Trump as an opportunity to cultivate a positive view of China,” said Sun, who was in Beijing during the summit. “They think maybe they can use the next two-and-a-half years to show people that China isn’t as bad as everyone thinks it is.”

She added that Chinese officials were especially keen to sway opinions in foreign policy and national security circles in Washington.

The White House insists that the new “constructive relationship of strategic stability” is linked to “fairness and reciprocity”.

In a sign that some competition will continue, the Pentagon added several large Chinese technology companies and an electric carmaker to a list of enterprises linked to China’s military, an effort to limit their global trade.

But China has not adopted the Trump administration’s framing of the new phrase. The Chinese government has stressed that the language prioritises cooperation.

“It should be constant stability where differences are manageable, and the rela­tionship should not be like a roller coas­ter,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement.

Xi has been even bolder.

In a speech during the summit, he told Trump that “great changes unseen in a century are accelerating” – a phrase he has used before to describe the decline of US power.

He also urged Trump to try to avoid the “Thucydides Trap”, the theory that a rising power and an established power are likely to go to war.

In another significant act, Trump recently decided to allow Nvidia, the US technology company, to sell powerful chips to Chinese companies.

That move has drawn some criticism from lawmakers and former officials of both parties who had endorsed the Biden administration’s export controls on advanced chips.

China did not immediately approve the imports, but in recent weeks, Chinese exe­cutives have sensed a potential easing by Beijing and sought ways to buy the chips, Sun said.

Officials across Asia are trying to discern where their nations fit into Trump’s strategic shift.

Rubio’s trip to Delhi after the Beijing summit was aimed at reassuring Indian leaders after a tumultuous year and a half of policies and statements by Trump that have been widely perceived as against India.

But little of substance came from the trip, which included tourism and a gala hosted by the US embassy alongside a meeting with the top diplomats from Australia, India and Japan, the other memb­ers of a group known as the Quad.

Some officials and analysts see Trump’s warming towards Beijing as leading to an inevitable move away from shared goals with India and other Asian countries.

“The strategic convergence on China was the glue that held US-India policy together,” said Milan Vaishnav, the direc­tor of the South Asia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Now there’s an absence of that.” — ©2026 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times