分类： politics

BEIJING – When former U.S. President Donald Trump launched the most intensive segment of his official visit to China on Thursday, diplomatic observers and policymakers on both sides entered the diplomatic summit braced for more symbolic spectacle than substantive progress. Key sticking points from bilateral trade to U.S. policy toward Taiwan and the ongoing conflict in Iran have created low expectations for landmark agreements, even as the visit unfolds against a backdrop of carefully curated ceremonial pageantry.

Trump’s arrival in the Chinese capital Wednesday evening opened with an elaborate formal welcome ceremony. His motorcade processed down central Beijing thoroughfares lined with alternating American and Chinese national flags, past towering skyscrapers illuminated with large red Chinese characters reading “Beijing Welcome.” After the procession, the U.S. president traveled to his downtown accommodation with no public engagements scheduled for the rest of the evening.

On Thursday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is scheduled to meet Trump for an official welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People, China’s top legislative venue located on the western edge of Tiananmen Square, which also hosts major state and cultural events. Following the opening ceremony, the two leaders will hold a one-on-one bilateral working meeting, after which Trump will tour the Temple of Heaven, a 15th-century imperial religious complex once used by Ming and Qing dynasty emperors to perform annual rituals for good harvest, that carries deep symbolic meaning for traditional Chinese concepts of cosmic order. The day will conclude with a formal state banquet hosted in Trump’s honor. A working meeting over tea and lunch is scheduled for the pair on Friday.

The White House has pushed back against low expectations, maintaining that Trump entered the trip with clear goals to secure tangible outcomes before his departure. Senior administration officials have hinted that potential trade-related announcements could come during the visit, including a expected Chinese commitment to increase purchases of American agricultural goods including soybeans and beef, as well as U.S.-manufactured commercial aircraft. The Trump administration is also pushing to formalize a new bilateral Board of Trade designed to address longstanding commercial frictions between the two global economic powers through ongoing structured dialogue.

Yet concrete details of any potential agreements remain elusive, even as geopolitical friction over the Iran conflict adds an extra layer of complexity to talks. China’s longstanding close economic ties to Iran have put Beijing at odds with Washington’s policy goals in the region, creating a major point of tension ahead of the summit.

Trump’s three-day Beijing trip comes as the Iran conflict continues to dominate domestic U.S. political discourse, stoking growing fears of economic weakness in the U.S. as the country enters a heated midterm election cycle. With November’s congressional elections approaching, Trump’s Republican Party is fighting to retain control of both chambers of Congress, and the economic fallout from the Iran war has emerged as a top voter concern. The U.S.-led conflict with Iran has resulted in the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global chokepoint for oil and natural gas shipments, leaving energy tankers stranded and driving sharp spikes in global energy prices that threaten to undermine global economic growth.

The extended, structured schedule of one-on-one engagement between Trump and Xi, set against the backdrop of formal diplomatic events, will create ample opportunity for the two leaders to tackle the full slate of thorny bilateral and global issues on the agenda. Beyond Iran and trade, those topics include the longstanding dispute over Taiwan and a proposed three-way nuclear arms limitation pact between the United States, China and Russia.

Despite the open agenda, most diplomatic analysts expect little progress beyond ceremonial pleasantries and the mutual public praise that Trump and Xi have exchanged consistently for years. Jim Lewis, a technology policy fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, predicted that neither side will make meaningful headway on the two most contentious foreign policy issues up for discussion. “Trump will press the Chinese to help him on Iran. They’ll be unwilling. The Chinese will press Trump to make concessions on Taiwan. We’ll see what we get out of that,” Lewis explained.

Back in Washington, domestic political tensions over the Iran conflict deepened Wednesday, when Senate Republicans again blocked Democratic legislation aimed at ending U.S. hostilities in Iran. The vote saw a rare party break from Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who crossed party lines to vote with Democrats, becoming the third Senate Republican to oppose continued U.S. military engagement in the conflict.

As the world’s largest buyer of Iranian crude oil, China’s position on Iran is a core priority for the Trump administration. Trump has publicly downplayed suggestions that he will push Xi to take stronger action to pressure Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, though senior White House officials have confirmed that the president will make that case to Xi in closed-door negotiations.

The president has also stressed that concerns over U.S. economic fallout will not soften his demands in negotiations over Iran, even amid a fragile current ceasefire. When asked as he departed the White House whether the financial strain on ordinary American households would factor into his Iranian negotiations, Trump responded bluntly: “Not even a little bit.”

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said, adding that he believes “every American understands” that priority.

The Trump administration has struggled to present a consistent public message on inflation and the Iran conflict, however. Vice President JD Vance told reporters Wednesday that Trump remained “laser focused” on tackling inflation, pushing back against the president’s own explicit comments that the U.S. economy was not a factor in resolving the war. When asked about Trump’s comments, Vance claimed, “Well, I don’t think the president said that. I think that’s a misrepresentation of what the president said.”

Discussions over trade and Taiwan are also expected to be tense. The status of Taiwan looms large over the summit: China has long claimed the self-governing island as part of its sovereign territory, and Beijing has strongly objected to U.S. plans to sell advanced military weapons to Taipei. The Trump administration has already approved an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, but has not yet moved forward with implementing the sale. Trump has also openly expressed greater ambivalence about U.S. commitments to Taiwan, a shift that has sparked widespread speculation about whether he could be open to rolling back American support for the island democracy.

Taiwan is the world’s leading producer of advanced semiconductors, which are critical components for cutting-edge artificial intelligence development. Trump has sought to advance new trade deals with Taiwan that would incentivize increased chip manufacturing within the United States.

Trump personally invited Jensen Huang, CEO of leading chipmaker Nvidia, to join him on Air Force One during a refueling stop in Alaska en route to Beijing. Huang is one of a dozen high-profile CEOs from the technology, defense, finance and agricultural sectors joining Trump’s official delegation. Other senior members of the U.S. delegation include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as Trump’s son Eric Trump and daughter-in-law Lara Trump. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who previously led Trump’s initiative to cut federal staffing and shrink the size of the federal government, is also part of the delegation.

The U.S. and China reached a bilateral trade truce last year that eased tit-for-tat threats of steep new tariffs on each other’s goods. The White House says ongoing discussions have shown mutual interest in extending the agreement, though it remains unclear whether any formal announcement of an extension will come during this visit.

Trump has said he will press Xi to grant greater market access to U.S. firms in China, saying he will urge his Chinese counterpart to “‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic.” He is also seeking to extend an existing agreement that allows China to continue exporting rare earth minerals to the United States, a deal that has so far prevented Beijing from restricting global rare earth supplies in response to Trump’s earlier tariff threats.

Senior U.S. officials have also confirmed that Trump will raise the proposal for a three-way nuclear arms pact between the U.S., China and Russia that would place caps on each nation’s nuclear arsenal, an idea that Beijing has previously viewed with open skepticism.

Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed reporting to this article.

A growing rift has erupted between the Trump White House and major U.S. news outlets after independent reporting revealed that classified U.S. intelligence assessments directly contradict the administration’s public claims that Iran’s military capabilities have been completely destroyed. The confrontation has sparked fresh alarms over escalating attacks on press freedom from the Trump administration, as policymakers face growing scrutiny over the trajectory of the ongoing conflict with Iran.

The New York Times first broke the story on Tuesday, citing declassified internal assessments compiled earlier this month that draw a sharp distinction between the Trump administration’s upbeat public narrative and the confidential briefings provided to senior policymakers. According to the report, U.S. spy agencies have confirmed that Iran has rapidly reestablished operational access to the vast majority of its key missile infrastructure, including primary launch sites, mobile deployment units, and underground storage facilities that the administration claimed had been wiped out in joint U.S.-Israeli bombardment campaigns.

Most concerning for senior national security officials, the assessments note that 30 out of Iran’s 33 active missile sites positioned along the Strait of Hormuz — one of the world’s most critical global energy chokepoints — are now fully operational once again. The reactivation of these sites puts U.S. naval vessels and commercial oil tankers transiting the strategic waterway at direct risk, the report added.

The Times’ reporting followed a similar exclusive published one week earlier by The Washington Post, which outlined a confidential Central Intelligence Agency analysis delivered to top administration policymakers. The CIA assessment concluded that Iran’s economy could withstand a sustained U.S. naval blockade for a minimum of three to four months before encountering crippling hardship, contradicting administration claims that the blockade would force Tehran to capitulate in short order.

The Post’s reporting also confirmed the core findings of the later New York Times assessment, noting that the broader U.S. intelligence community has determined that Iran retains the vast majority of its ballistic missile capacity despite weeks of intensive joint bombing campaigns. Citing an unnamed senior U.S. official, the outlet reported that Iran still holds roughly 75 percent of its pre-conflict inventory of mobile missile launchers and approximately 70 percent of its original stockpile of operational missiles. The official added that Iranian forces have successfully recovered and reopened nearly all of their underground weapons storage sites, repaired damaged missiles, and even completed assembly of new missiles that were near completion when the conflict began.

Within hours of the Times’ publication, President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform to lash out at the reporting. Trump, who has repeatedly claimed Iran has been left with no functional military capacity, denounced the outlets’ reporting as “virtual TREASON,” arguing that the claims of intact Iranian military capabilities are false and outrageous. “They are aiding and abetting the enemy!” Trump wrote, doubling down on his original claim that “Iran has ‘no Navy, their Air Force is gone, all Technology is gone, their ‘leaders’ are no longer with us, and the Country is an Economic Disaster.”

Beyond the divergence between public claims and classified intelligence on Iran’s capabilities, multiple independent reports have also revealed that the Trump administration has drastically understated the damage Iranian counterstrikes have inflicted on U.S. military assets across the Persian Gulf. In a report published late last month, NBC News cited three unnamed U.S. officials, two congressional aides, and an additional source familiar with the damage assessment, which found that U.S. bases and equipment suffered far more extensive damage than the administration has publicly acknowledged. The outlet added that repair costs are expected to reach into the billions of dollars.

A subsequent Washington Post analysis of open-source satellite imagery reinforced these findings, documenting that Iranian strikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures and pieces of equipment at U.S. military installations across the Middle East since the outbreak of hostilities. Targets have included aircraft hangars, troop barracks, fuel depots, fixed-wing aircraft, and critical infrastructure including radar systems, communications networks, and air defense installations — a scale of destruction vastly larger than the U.S. government has publicly admitted.

Foreign policy analysts have already concluded that the Trump administration’s Iran strategy has suffered a major strategic failure 10 weeks into the conflict. Writing on Wednesday, Brookings Institution foreign policy scholar Phil Gordon argued that “10 weeks in, the strategic failure is undeniable” for the administration. Gordon warned that the greatest ongoing risk stems from the president’s inability to accept a setback: “The risk now is that having missed the opportunity to declare victory after the first few weeks, Trump can’t accept defeat and humiliation so will keep looking for the next quick fix, thereby likely only making things worse.”

Top Trump administration officials have doubled down on attacks against the press for publishing the unflattering disclosures. Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth has already labeled U.S. media outlets “unpatriotic” and warned reporters to “think twice” before publishing classified information that contradicts the administration’s narrative. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice issued subpoenas to the outlet’s journalists in March seeking records tied to their Iran war coverage.

Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called the subpoenas the latest example of the administration’s escalating campaign against press freedom. “Time and again, the administration has shown itself willing to disregard the First Amendment and long-standing limits on the use of government power to go after news outlets that publish embarrassing or critical information about the government,” Fallow said.

Eight years after former and current US President Donald Trump labeled China a hostile revisionist power seeking to displace American influence in Asia in his first-term National Security Strategy, his 2025 iteration of the document marks a striking departure in tone. The harsh, confrontational labels that defined the 2017 strategy have been stripped out entirely, replaced with muted, generic language that avoids direct naming even when addressing points of friction.

The updated strategy retains core policy priorities: it commits the US to rebalancing bilateral trade relations and lists deterrence of conflict over Taiwan as a key national security goal, but frames both goals in neutral terms. Most notably, a section targeting foreign influence in the Western Hemisphere that clearly targets Chinese infrastructure investments never mentions China by name, referring only to vague “non-hemispheric competitors” and foreign firms operating in the region.

This shift in language corresponds to measurable softening in policy, even as the Trump administration maintains pressure on China across multiple fronts. The White House has rolled back some of the steep tariffs imposed during earlier trade wars and relaxed restrictions on sales of US high-end semiconductors to Chinese buyers—a change that has spurred sharp criticism from longstanding China hawks within Republican policy circles.
Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security advisor during Trump’s first term and helped craft the administration’s original hardline China approach, used January congressional testimony to push back against the semiconductor sales, warning that the relaxed rules would accelerate China’s military modernization efforts.

The trade war that defined Trump’s first term and returned in his second has hit American agricultural producers hardest of all, a reality that has shaped the administration’s shifting approach. During 2025’s trade escalation, China halted all purchases of American soybeans for several months in retaliation for new 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. A recent analysis from *The Economist* confirmed that the US agriculture sector has suffered greater damage from reciprocal Chinese tariffs than any other American industry.

A tentative truce was reached last fall: China agreed to resume soybean purchases, and Trump agreed to cut existing tariffs on Chinese goods. But both sides remain skeptical that the fragile agreement will hold long-term, framing the deal as a temporary pause in hostilities rather than a permanent resolution of trade tensions.

That makes the upcoming summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, scheduled for May 14 and 15 in Beijing, a critical test for the bilateral relationship. Soybean trade will top the agenda, but it is far from the only issue on the table. China is pushing for further cuts to remaining US tariffs and diplomatic action to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which has faced disruptive tensions. Washington’s priorities include securing more reliable access to rare earth minerals and cracking down on the flow of fentanyl precursors out of China.

For Trump, securing a commitment for continued Chinese soybean purchases is a key political and economic priority, and analysts widely expect Xi to allow Trump to claim a diplomatic win ahead of any future electoral cycles. But even a cordial summit with a positive closing statement will not resolve the deep structural tensions between the two powers. Both sides have proven they can inflict significant economic pain on one another, and both have shown willingness to use that leverage to advance their negotiating positions.

In the weeks leading up to the summit, China has already demonstrated its willingness to push back against US actions twice. First, Chinese regulators ordered Meta Platforms to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of domestic Chinese AI startup Manus. Second, after the US Treasury sanctioned five small Chinese refiners for purchasing Iranian crude oil, Beijing retaliated by activating its anti-sanctions blocking rules for the first time, allowing the targeted firms to sue any financial or insurance entity that complies with the US sanctions in Chinese courts.

Lingling Wei, a veteran Wall Street Journal China correspondent with deep access to Chinese leadership circles, reports that top Chinese officials believe they have developed a framework for managing US-China relations with Trump at the helm: “The U.S. president can be exhausted and outwaited, and calibrated escalation resets the bargaining floor instead of blowing up the relationship.”

The question remains whether Beijing is overestimating its ability to influence Trump. While Trump is invested in making the summit appear a success, he has little incentive to be seen as easily manipulated. Analysts say it would not be surprising to see a new show of force from Washington after the summit to remind Beijing of American leverage.

For the moment, the status quo is an uneasy truce, not a permanent peace. With luck, the temporary pause will hold, allowing bilateral trade including soybean exports to continue flowing. But China has already begun long-term preparations for a future breakdown in trade, working aggressively to reduce its dependence on American soybeans. Beijing has ramped up purchases of Brazilian soybeans and invested in Brazilian infrastructure to speed export logistics, while also developing alternative fermented pig feed to reduce overall domestic soybean consumption.

That reality leaves American soybean producers with a clear lesson, analysts say: they too must prepare for the worst. While some level of exports to China will likely continue even if the truce holds, farmers need to aggressively expand sales to other domestic and international markets to insulate themselves from future disruptions. Just as China seeks to end its reliance on American agriculture, American farmers must end their reliance on the Chinese market.

NEW YORK – After a high-profile federal trial that underscores escalating U.S. tensions over transnational Chinese surveillance operations on American soil, a 64-year-old Chinese-American man has been found guilty of acting as an unregistered illegal foreign agent and deleting communications tied to a Chinese government contact. Lu Jianwang, who also goes by Harry Lu, was acquitted of a separate conspiracy charge, delivering a mixed outcome to a case that has highlighted deep divides over how U.S. law enforcement addresses China’s global transnational repression efforts.

Federal prosecutors allege that Lu and co-defendant Chen Jinping founded the secret outpost in Manhattan’s Chinatown in 2022, shortly after Lu attended an official ceremony in China’s Fujian province where China’s Ministry of Public Security unveiled a global network of 30 so-called “overseas police stations.” The Chinese government has publicly acknowledged operating these outposts to monitor and target individuals it labels as opponents to its interests, including pro-democracy dissidents living abroad.

The Manhattan outpost operated out of shared office space with the America ChangLe Association, a community group co-run by Lu – a U.S. citizen for decades – and his brother Jimmy. The organization characterizes itself as a social hub for Fujianese immigrants in the city, a framing the defense has leaned into heavily throughout the legal proceedings. During the trial, Lu’s legal team argued the space was never a covert spy hub, but rather a legitimate community resource that helped overseas Chinese renew their Chinese driver’s licenses remotely when COVID-19 border restrictions shut down cross-border travel, alongside serving as a gathering spot for locals to play mahjong and ping-pong. Defense attorney John Carman has repeatedly dismissed the prosecution’s case as an overreach, claiming prosecutors twisted an innocent bureaucratic misstep by a well-meaning community leader into a fabricated espionage narrative, dressing up a routine paperwork violation with baseless claims of intelligence gathering.

Prosecutors pushed back on that narrative, noting that even if Lu’s only official activity was facilitating driver’s license renewals on behalf of the Chinese government, that still violates U.S. laws requiring foreign agents to formally register their activities with U.S. authorities. Jurors were presented with direct evidence during the trial, including a large banner hung at the Chinatown location explicitly labeling the space the “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York USA.”

The case traces back to an FBI raid conducted in October 2022, launched after investigators received a tip from a watchdog organization that tracks transnational repression by Chinese authorities. During the raid, agents seized digital devices including a computer and multiple cellphones, rummaged through documents, and accessed locked storage cabinets and a safe on the property. The day after the search, prosecutors confirm Lu admitted to FBI agents that he had launched the outpost, communicated with his Chinese government handler via the messaging platform WeChat, and deliberately deleted all of those conversations ahead of the raid.

Lu spoke briefly to supporters as he exited Brooklyn Federal Court following the verdict, but declined to respond to questions from assembled reporters. He remains free on bail as he awaits sentencing, which has not yet been scheduled. His co-defendant Chen Jinping accepted a guilty plea in December 2024 to one count of conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent, resolving her part of the case ahead of Lu’s trial.

The conviction comes amid growing bipartisan concern in the U.S. over China’s widespread campaign of transnational repression, which has targeted dissidents, activists, and minority groups living in countries across the globe. The verdict is expected to add fuel to ongoing debates over how U.S. law enforcement should balance national security concerns with protecting the rights of Chinese-American communities.