U.S.-China Relations in the Age of Trump – Perry World House
The views expressed are solely the author’s and do not reflect those of Perry World House, the University of Pennsylvania, or Carnegie Corporation of New York
U.S. President Donald Trump’s nationalistic revanchism and his spate of overseas military interventions are adding new meaning to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s oft-used phrase “great changes unseen in a century.” Trump’s focus on the Western hemisphere and the Middle East is overall a strategic opening for the People’s Republic of China. The United States is again distracted from Asia, the latter being Beijing’s priority. Additionally, America’s turn to an imperialist bullying approach, including unilateral brute force and greater interference in internal affairs, provide yet more fodder for Chinese propaganda narratives. Many Chinese observers are confident that anti-American sentiment will rise. At the same time, Chinese elites are cognizant of a turbulent period ahead, particularly in bilateral relations with Washington, requiring some shifts and some continuity in Beijing’s strategy.
Authoritative and semi-authoritative Chinese analyses of the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy draw two main conclusions. First, while China may not be labeled explicitly as a strategic competitor, the United States is still seeking to maintain global dominance and address its declining national power. As one commentator put it, it is “not a shift in the direction of hegemony but a shift in the method of hegemony.” The stated focus on homeland security and the Western hemisphere is a strategic “retreat to advance” and a potential “smokescreen” for Washington to conserve costs while waging a protracted “war of attrition.” A recent series of essays by prominent Chinese commentators interpreted U.S. military interventionism in Latin America as part of a strategy to suppress China by targeting countries close to Beijing and cutting off Chinese access to trade and industrial supply chains.
On the other hand, the United States is more narrowly focused on economic, technological, and industrial competitionwith China. But competition is now about asserting national strength and securing perceived core interests as opposed to a “life and death” ideological Cold War struggle, which provides breathing room for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by taking human rights, democracy promotion, and regime change off the table. This transactional, interest-driven approach could present certain opportunities for China. Assuming Trump cares increasingly about his own legacy post-midterms, this could also be a chance for China to offer a grand deal to the U.S. president’s liking in leader-to-leader diplomacy that appeals to Trump’s instincts.
Because Trump sees Taiwan as a lever rather than a core values-based interest, he is inclined to downplay this issue in broader U.S.-China relations and prioritize avoiding conflict. It is quite plausible that if Trump were able to obtain things he cares most about, such as promised Chinese purchases of Boeing jets and U.S. agricultural products (or perhaps even reduced Chinese contestation over the Panama Canal), he might be willing to water down political support for Taiwan and postponing or reducing arms sales. Even rhetorical shifts add uncertainty and lower morale in Taiwan, complementing ongoing Chinese influence operations across the Strait. For its part, China is certainly willing to swallow some economic pain and losses of ostensible friends (see Venezuela and Iran) for its core goals in the Indo-Pacific.
Drawing lessons from the success of rare earth export controls in getting the Trump administration to deescalate the trade war and come to the bargaining table, China sees periodic coercion and escalation as a bearable and expected path to achieve “stability” and negotiated outcomes (yida cutan, yidou cuwen). U.S.-China relations would thus take the form of “controllable cooperation” (kekong hezuo). We should expect Beijing not to hesitate in the future to leverage its dominance in critical minerals mining, processing, and manufacturing as an effective pressure point on U.S. policy.
Of course, Beijing remains wary of Trump’s mercurial unpredictability and is not rosy-eyed about his apparent interest in engagement. Coupled with the general hardening of views toward China in the U.S. national security establishment, this would mean that any deal would need to at least be framed as bolstering U.S. economic superiority at home and abroad. One commentator suggests finding synergies between Trump’s MAGA movement and Beijing’s stated goal of “realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” But one clear implication of observing Trump’s America First strategy driven by economic nationalism is that Beijing will not let up on its own drive for economic and technological self-reliance, while continuing to present China as a stable and predictable partner to the rest of the world—and maintaining the Chinese economy as a key hub in critical supply chains.
Beyond U.S.-China relations, the Trump administration’s policies provide China with simultaneous incentives for heightened coercion and enhanced cooperation. Beijing could exploit Trump’s eagerness for a deal to coerce US allies such as Japan and the Philippines without facing significant blowback from Washington. The Chinese government has steadily applied economic and military coercion toward Tokyo, accompanied by increasingly bombastic nationalistic rhetoric, since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s November 2025 comment that a PRC blockade on Taiwan could prompt a response by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Yet, the White House has remained relatively silent on the issue, at least in public. President Trump reportedly urged[TS1] Takaichi to avoid provoking China over Taiwan. The Philippines has also faced intensifying Chinese military coercion over the past year, with increasingly routine asymmetric skirmishes involving Chinese coastguard ships ramming and firing water cannons at Filipino fishing boats.
Washington’s current security focus on the Middle East, including shifting missile defense and naval assets away from the Indo-Pacific for its war on Iran, provides a more permissive environment for China to engage in military and gray zone coercion in East and Southeast Asia, while probing for weaknesses in U.S. alliances. Trump’s demands for allies to do more could, in Japan’s case, trigger deep-rooted Chinese fears of a more active Japan. Given that South Korea endured significant domestic opposition and Chinese economic coercion to deploy THAAD batteries, U.S. partners could be less willing in the future to rough out Chinese pressure for unreliable U.S. demands. Beijing will likely ramp up its testing of American resolve and support for Manila, which will be a key player in any U.S. denial strategy involving the first island chain but still has relatively weak deterrence capabilities and periodically faces domestic contestation over US alliance presence. This is further complicated by Chinese influence operations to spread pro-China and anti-American narratives, often with the help of supporters of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
At the same time, it should come as no surprise that China is happy to exploit Trump’s bullying approach to drive wedgesand deepen divisions between the United States and the rest of the world–what could be termed “contestation of exterior lines” (waixian boyi). (Exterior lines refer to a military strategy with forces converging toward a centrally-located enemy.) The transatlantic divide is seen as a prime opportunity–several Chinese elites have written about engaging European countries to not so much pull them away from Washington but simply to ensure that Europe would not support U.S. efforts to confront or contain China. Trade, technology, and climate change are seen as areas of potential expanded cooperation.
China will only double down on its efforts in Southeast Asia, where countries have become accustomed to American distraction and an inability to back up diplomatic rhetoric with sustained economic and political engagement. April 2025 saw Xi travel to the region as well as a Central Conference on Work Relating to the Periphery, with elevated political coordination signaling the strategic prioritization of China’s neighbors as fundamental for Beijing amidst heightened U.S.-China competition. Chinese analyses emphasize development and security as “two wheels” of China’s periphery work, which is now viewed as going beyond pure diplomacy to a more comprehensive strategy of economic, political, and security engagement. Deepening regional integration across Asian nations, whether as resource suppliers, alternative markets, or manufacturing bases, would ensure that their boats would inextricably rise and fall with China’s tide.
Beijing’s offers of economic cooperation would thus be designed to position China as a central node of transnational supply chains. This would, in turn, inhibit U.S. efforts to create supply chains in critical minerals or other strategic sectors that would exclude or minimize dependence on China. For example, China already dominates nickel mining and processing in Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, and will remain a dominant player as the country seeks to move up the value chain in electric vehicle (EV) battery production. Thailand, a regional leader in auto manufacturing, has offered subsidies and tax breaks to attract investment from Chinese EV makers. Of course, Chinese investment has not been without controversy, and many countries remain concerned about the influx of low-cost Chinese products in their own economies. But if China can offer credible economic promises that are responsive to local needs and allow other nations to move up the value chain, the resulting effect that many countries will become even more deeply embedded in Chinese-led supply chains.
This is even more likely in growing areas such as electric vehicles and clean energy. Compared to the Trump administration’s open disdain, China is aggressively presenting itself to the rest of the world as a leader in green technology and the green transition. Beijing signed in October 2025 an upgrade to a free trade agreement with ASEAN countries designed to expand cooperation in digital infrastructure, green development, and supply chain connectivity. Chinese leaders have actively linked the Global Development Initiative–which gains added legitimacy from being embedded in United Nations frameworks–to cooperative efforts on AI governance and improved access to clean energy, areas which are highly appealing to many developing countries. This further builds on its rebranding of the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative to focus on “small yet beautiful” digital and green infrastructure projects.
U.S. distraction and retrenchment from the Indo-Pacific also provide an opening for Chinese proposals of new Asian security models, with a flurry of suggestions for Beijing to become more active in military cooperation and exchanges as well as law enforcement cooperation on non-traditional security issues such as transnational crime, terrorism, and public security; and for China to promote decentralized overlapping webs of security governance and partnerships, with Southeast Asia and Central Asia being the most feasible recipients. In March 2026, China and Vietnam concluded their inaugural ministerial-level 3+3 strategic dialogue on diplomacy, defense, and public security. Although it remains unclear how much tangible progress can be made–such initiatives are more likely to serve as a way for China to mitigate and manage security disputes to its favor rather than truly resolve them–such trends will help Beijing transcend the conventional bifurcating narrative of “China for economics and America for security” to argue that China can do more of both as Washington becomes increasingly unreliable.
Ultimately, the uncertainty of the Trump era gives China more strategic space to continue alternating cycles of coercion and cooperation with reduced fear of alienating countries. Offering diplomatic niceties, promoting trade and investment flows in contrast to U.S. disruption, and dangling hopes of further economic deals keeps governments and companies coming back rather than diversifying away from China. Even after China’s escalatory use of rare earth export controls that threatened supply chains across multiple sectors, the last few months have seen a string of European leaders visiting Beijing with business delegations in tow. China is clear-eyed about its goals – it is happy to create goodwill but does not expect to permanently win hearts and minds; rather, it seeks to derail U.S. alliance coordination and stymie broader coalition-building against China. It is possible that Beijing could become overconfident and overly aggressive, as it has in the past. But it just has to make fewer mistakes than Washington.
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