A new equilibrium: Respect, fairness and reciprocity in China-US ties

Editor's note: Zheng Junfeng is a senior business news anchor and commentator at CGTN. This article reflects the author's perspective.

From US President Donald Trump's personal reception at Joint Base Andrews to the Marine Corps drill performance on the White House South Lawn, the eyes of the world were captivated by this rare, high-profile state visit. Intimate conversations in the Oval Office and a candlelit state banquet beneath the White House chandeliers made for striking diplomatic imagery.

Yet this grand spectacle was far more than ceremony—it was a highly visible, global broadcast of China-US strategic parity. The lavish red-carpet treatment accorded to Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan implicitly acknowledged that the bilateral dynamic has fundamentally shifted.

This shift was codified in the summit's defining consensus: To "build a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability based on respect, fairness and reciprocity." Respect, fairness, and reciprocity are principles newly added to the May 2026 Beijing framework reached by the two presidents.

This update reflects an untold truth: The structural parity now defining bilateral relations was not granted through political goodwill alone, but forged through China's technological autonomy and industrial endurance.

The path to this equilibrium can be traced back to 2017, when the first Trump administration initiated a regime of tariffs, export controls, and targeted sanctions designed to curb China's technological ascent.

Washington's initial strategy relied on aggressive containment, most notably through the sweeping ban on Huawei. However, rather than enforcing a technological ceiling, this pressure operated as a catalyst, compelling China to recognize that technological self-sufficiency was its only choice.

China responded by anchoring its growth in an innovation-driven development strategy. This strategy is no secret—it has been widely reported by CGTN but long overlooked by Western strategists. Now its dividends are visible across multiple critical domains.

In AI, China's DeepSeek and Kimi are drawing ever closer to Silicon Valley's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, offering more inclusive and cost-effective alternatives.

In hardware and chips, Chinese firms such as Huawei and Xiaomi have built ecosystems spanning smartphones, smart car platforms and high-end chip manufacturing.

In aerospace, China has launched and sustained its own space station, Tiangong, and its home-developed reusable rockets can land on both land and sea—presenting the first serious challenger to American commercial space dominance represented by SpaceX.

In advanced robotics, Chinese humanoids such as Unitree now match their American counterparts Boston Dynamics and Tesla Optimus in real-time agility, and outpace them in moving from prototype to volume production.

Technological autonomy alone does not fully account for China's bargaining power. The primary source of China's diplomatic resilience remains its unparalleled industrial depth.

When the US launched its unilateral tariff war against the world in 2025, China responded tit-for-tat. Tariff levels dropped after talks, while bilateral trade volume remained at high levels.

China earned the right to equitable negotiations by building the world's most comprehensive industrial system. It is the only economy covering all 666 industrial sub-categories under the UN's International Standard Industrial Classification.

China has achieved global leadership in manufacturing electric vehicles, solar panels, consumer electronics, and ships. This production capacity is supported by decades of infrastructure overhaul in high-speed rail, power grids, and 5G networks, yielding internal economies of scale that Western manufacturing bases struggle to replicate.

At the same time, China has countered external unilateral tariffs by diversifying its trading ties with Belt and Road partner countries. Combined with its advantages in rare earths, this affords China undeniable leverage in trade negotiations with the US.

The fairness explicitly recognized at the Washington summit is the combined result of long-term planning, strategic patience, high-quality growth, and persistent hard work—not concession or capitulation.

Mutual respect serves as the stabilizing anchor for this new era of relations. As President Xi stated, the objective is a relationship where "cooperation is the mainstay, competition remains within bounds, differences are manageable, and peace is achievable."

This respect materialized through pragmatic agreements and the acknowledgement of red lines in Washington.

On AI governance, the two leaders discussed AI guardrails—a critical step given that both countries are racing toward the frontier of artificial intelligence.

On trade, the tariff truce is likely to be extended, with consensus anticipated for more favorable tariff treatment for $30 billion of non-sensitive goods in each direction, providing predictability for the global trade system.

On core red lines, while they exchanged views on the Middle East situation, Ukraine crisis, Korean Peninsula, China's Taiwan region remained the paramount issue. President Xi reiterated China's position on safeguarding its national unity and territorial integrity, urging the US' commitment against unilateral status quo shifts as a prerequisite for broader cooperation.

The striking imagery of the Washington spectacle was the ultimate reflection of a maturing bilateral architecture. The US has recognized that attempts to contain China's rise are unviable, and that a relationship based on respect, fairness, and reciprocity is the only realistic path forward.

This diplomatic shift sends a stabilizing message to the world. As President Xi articulated, "achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand." By embracing respect, fairness and reciprocity, China and the US have shown the world that they choose dialogue over confrontation, providing much-needed stability and predictability.