The May 2026 Trump-Xi summit in Beijing was not merely a diplomatic encounter. It was a strategic test of power, leverage, and necessity between the world’s two most consequential states. Behind the ceremonial warmth lay unresolved tensions over Taiwan, Iran, energy security, trade, technology, Russia, Japan, Europe, and the future of global order. This essay reads the summit as a turning point in managed competition: not peace, not reconciliation, but a fragile attempt to build a floor beneath the world’s most dangerous bilateral relationship.
The Beijing Variable: A Geopolitical Analysis of US-China Relations After the Trump-Xi Summit, May 2026
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