The joint communiqué pledged a "constructive relationship of strategic stability", but the word "Russia" was absent entirely. Ukraine was referenced only as the "Ukrainian crisis", deliberately avoiding the word "war". Taiwan was described merely as "the most important issue in U.S.-China relations", with no specifics.
Taiwan pressure
Behind the diplomatic language, Beijing has been pressing Washington for concrete concessions, according to Rush Doshi, who served as China Director on the National Security Council under President Biden and helped prepare previous U.S.-China summits. China wants the U.S. to shift from saying it "does not support Taiwan independence" to saying it "opposes" it — a change that, for Taipei, would represent a reversal of forty years of American policy. Beijing is also pressing Washington to freeze arms sales to Taiwan, or at minimum to begin coordinating weapons lists with Beijing.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio moved quickly to assert that "the U.S. position has not changed". But Rubio, who a year ago called China "the greatest threat to national security", now speaks of "responsible statecraft" — a shift that has not gone unnoticed.
Hal Brands, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and member of the Congressional U.S.-China Commission, warns that a conflict over Taiwan would be a global cataclysm — the most violent geopolitical shock since World War Two — potentially severing Pacific trade routes and risking escalation into a world war. He cautions that even the toughest sanctions against China would not work fast enough to deter an invasion, noting the world failed to draw that lesson from Russia's aggression against Ukraine.
Iran leverage
The summit unfolded against the backdrop of a blocked Strait of Hormuz. As the largest consumer of Iranian oil, China has a direct interest in reopening it, giving Xi leverage. Trump and Xi agreed in their joint statement that the strait must remain open and that Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons — but the dynamic had shifted.
Doshi called it a trap: when Washington de-escalates because it was forced to, it appears weak. "When you de-escalate only because you were forced to, you look like a paper tiger", he said — a characterization that complicates any future U.S. effort to press Beijing on its support for Moscow.
China arming Russia
That support is more extensive than publicly acknowledged. According to Michael Kuiken, a member of the Congressional China Commission, every key component in Russian combat drones — cameras, chips, motors, and software — comes from China. In return, Beijing receives battlefield intelligence on Ukrainian tactics, which it is using to train its own military AI systems.
Europe sidelined
Europe was barely mentioned in the summit discussions — a continuation of a pattern in which two parties negotiate while a third pays the bill. Washington has called on European nations to provide security guarantees for Ukraine and finance arms purchases for Kyiv. Decisions over Iran and the Strait of Hormuz crisis are being made without Brussels, Warsaw, Berlin or London — while European nations bear the consequences, including Ukraine, which faces shortfalls in interceptor missiles, some of which have been redirected to the Middle East.
The drone factor
Defense analyst David Axe notes that battlefield technologies developed in Ukraine could ultimately deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan. Taipei could, in a relatively short time, build what Axe calls a "drone wall" — flooding surrounding airspace and waters with thousands of cheap but lethal unmanned vehicles. According to Axe, this approach could not merely delay but actually derail a potential invasion.
Angela Stent, a former U.S. National Intelligence Officer for Russia, has observed that Trump operates in a framework of major power centers that must be reckoned with, and smaller nations expected to accept whatever is decided for them. The Beijing summit, whatever its importance, cannot reverse the new reality in which those smaller nations are increasingly writing their own rules.
Reporting by Dmytro Anopchenko, Polish Radio's special correspondent
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Source: Polish Radio