The China-US meeting as a stabilizing anchor

Editor's note: Zhu Chenge, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is an assistant researcher at the Institute of American Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

US President Donald Trump's upcoming visit to China, scheduled on May 13 to 15, will be his first trip to the country in nine years. In these nine years, China-US relations have seen ups and downs – trade frictions, technological rivalry and mounting geopolitical turbulence. For that very reason, the strategic importance of the meeting between the two heads of state can hardly be overstated.

The history of international relations shows that direct communication between national leaders has often played a crucial role in managing major-power competition and stabilizing bilateral ties. Direct communication at the leadership level – conveying goodwill, clearly defining each side’s interests and dispelling strategic misperceptions – is often the best safeguard against major strategic miscalculation. No bilateral relationship has improved amid estrangement and a refusal to communicate. Nor can sound strategic decisions be made in the absence of understanding and engagement.

In the more than half a century of engagement between the new China and the US, head-of-state diplomacy has consistently served as the most direct and effective stabilizing anchor of bilateral relations. Whenever Chinese and US leaders have been able to engage in candid face-to-face exchanges, differences have tended to be managed and cooperation has been reinvigorated.

For example, following the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump in the Republic of Korea last year, there were notable improvements in maintaining open channels of communication, expanding the list of cooperative agendas and narrowing the scope of contentious issues. Both nations as well as the rest of the world benefited from these developments.

This underscores both the extraordinary importance and the inherent complexity of China-US relations. As one of the world's most consequential bilateral relationships, the sheer scale and complexity of the ties makes it difficult to sustain stability through routine working-level exchanges alone. Both sides recognize that given the current state of the bilateral ties, communication and negotiation through diplomatic channels alone are no longer sufficient to manage such a complex and multifaceted situation. Only direct engagement between the two leaders can help both sides recalibrate the relationship at critical moments, better understand each other's strategic intentions and core interests, and bring greater stability and predictability to the relationship.

Therefore, returning to the crucial track of leader-to-leader engagement has become a strategic consensus. It is also the reason why countries around the world will be closely watching this meeting, which reaffirms an important historical lesson: Head-of-state diplomacy serves as the stabilizing anchor of China-US relations.

If historical experience provides grounds for confidence, then today's global political realities lend the meeting an added sense of strategic urgency. The meeting comes at a pivotal moment in the transformation of the global order, which remains deeply unsettled.

Conflict in the Middle East continues to generate turbulence, global energy supplies and trade routes face mounting risks, and geopolitical competition in the Asia-Pacific is intensifying. As for China-US relations, their strategic competition in recent years has shown signs of expanding from specific areas into a broader range of domains. Their technological rivalry, for example, has already moved beyond semiconductors into frontier sectors such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.

The sources of these challenges vary. Some have emerged naturally amid sweeping global changes, others have been deliberately created by certain countries dissatisfied with the status quo. Overall, these factors have imposed significant external and internal pressures on both China and the US. Without effective management, both the global order and China-US relations could move closer to a dangerous tipping point, a scenario that no one wishes to see.

For this reason, Trump's visit to China will be far more than a routine ceremonial occasion. It will be a serious strategic dialogue in which the two leaders confront their core differences and make clear where their red lines lie. This meeting presents an important window of opportunity for effective strategic communication. Compared with approaches driven by "zero-sum" or even "negative-sum" thinking, the pursuit of mutual trust through communication has greater strategic rationality.

For both China and the US, strengthening strategic communication serves their shared interests. Since last year, the two countries have reached a series of understandings on issues such as tariffs and trade and gained a clearer understanding of each other's strategic objectives. These diplomatic achievements helped pave the way for this meeting.

Yet this is only the first step toward healthy and stable development of China-US relations. The two countries must devote greater attention to addressing deeper challenges, including both longstanding issues and emerging trends. For example, China and the US both need to communicate their intentions for cooperation more clearly; the US needs a clearer understanding of China's core interests and red lines; and both should pay closer attention to the risks associated with major-power competition in the age of AI.

At a time of growing global uncertainty, China and the US must seize the opportunity to make each other and the wider world safer and more prosperous. That, in turn, depends on a productive and substantive meeting between the leaders of the two countries.

Finally, this meeting will provide fundamental guidance for long-term interaction between the two countries. Any new strategic understanding during this visit regarding the principles, framework and priorities governing bilateral relations would serve as a fundamental guarantee for the healthy and stable development of China-US ties in the years ahead.

Improving the relationship is a long-term undertaking aligned with the strategic interests of both countries and the wider international community. Realistically speaking, China and the US will continue to differ on a range of issues, and no single meeting can erase those differences overnight. Yet the true mark of maturity in major-country relations lies in the ability to coexist despite differences, maintain strategic guardrails amid competition and expand areas of cooperation wherever possible.

Through state visits, phone conversations and interactions on multilateral diplomatic occasions, the leaders of the two countries have repeatedly built consensus, provided direction for bilateral relations and identified potential risks. As long as both sides act on the strategic understandings reached by their leaders and engage each other on the basis of equality, mutual respect and reciprocity, China and the US can avoid falling into the "Thucydides Trap."

That also demands policy continuity and stability in both countries. Regardless of changes in US domestic politics, there needs to be a deeper recognition that China's development represents an opportunity rather than a challenge, and that cooperation with China serves the fundamental interests of the American people.

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