US President Donald Trump (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping after their meeting at Gimhae International Airport, Busan, Oct 30, 2025
The brevity of the US President Donald Trump’s meeting last Thursday with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the Gimhae International Airport in the port city of Busan, South Korea, which lasted just 100 minutes, compared to Trump’s anticipated three to four hours, was a sobering reminder that the mistrust between the two world powers still runs deep. The meeting’s outcome appears more like a truce that is fragile.
Beijing is acutely conscious that Trump’s foreign policy is bewilderingly unpredictable. On Friday, Chinese foreign ministry announced the scheduled visit by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on November 3 to Beijing to attend the regular meeting between the Chinese and Russian heads of government.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Mishustin and his Chinese host Premier Li Qiang will “comprehensively review cooperation progress in various areas, plan the next stage of collaboration, and exchange in-depth views on issues of common concern.”
Guo added, “We look forward to using this regular meeting between the two premiers to further enhance mutual trust, build greater consensus, deepen cooperation, and inject new impetus into the development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era.” Mishustin will most certainly meet Xi.
On November 1, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov co-chaired the inter-governmental Russian-Chinese commission on investment cooperation in Beijing. Tass reported that the Russian side has drafted proposals on 27 projects in 18 Russian regions, including plans to establish production of dissolving pulp and viscose fibre in Irkutsk Region, create a scientific and clinical centre for ion-proton therapy in Moscow, and launch a year-round container line via the Northern Sea Route.
Manturov said, “Overall, it is important for the government and businesses of our countries to continue to pool and coordinate their efforts to comprehensively explore cooperation opportunities, as well as to develop effective cooperation formats that mitigate opportunistic and geopolitical risks. I am convinced that coordinated work will enable us to take Russian-Chinese investment cooperation to a new level.”
Simply put, Russia and China are giving finishing touches to a new format of cooperation to address their increasingly adversarial relationship with the US. Yet, Trump still thinks there is daylight possible between Russia and China. He wrote on Truth Social today, “My G2 meeting with President Xi was a great one for both our countries. The meeting will lead to everlasting peace and success. God bless both China and the USA!”
But, alongside the ‘G2’ hyperbole on everlasting peace, Trump also announced on Truth Social that he has ordered Pentagon to prepare for possible military action against Nigeria — another oil-rich country like Venezuela — to wipe out the Islamists who are allegedly attacking the Christian population in that “disgraced country.” Can it be that Trump is delusional or simply naive — or is deliberately indulging in sophistry? It’s hard to tell.
Trump rhetorically rated as a 12 out of 10 his meeting with Xi. However, the big question is whether a durable peace setting stable boundaries for China’s relations with the US can be expected.
Guardian’s diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour pointed out, rightly so, that the crux of the matter here is, “Trump’s strategic objectives in launching the trade war were not articulated –- the balance between protecting traditional US manufacturing, ring-fencing modern technology-based industries critical to US national security, punishing Chinese trade practices, or more broadly generally overpowering China as a competitive threat, was fudged. Gradually the battle morphed … from a trade war into a geopolitical trial of strength between the two world’s superpowers, a trial that left the whole world awaiting its outcome.”
Clearly, China is the winner. Its hardball approach paid off. By simply withholding soybean purchases and rare-earth exports, China extracted relief from US tariffs and delayed more export controls.
Indeed, this is only a framework agreement, which can unravel at a moment’s notice. Basically, Trump and Xi have agreed to restore the status quo ante whereby China would defer for a year the potentially crippling new restrictions on the export of rare-earth materials, and, secondly, will resume purchase of US soya beans (a hugely consequential issue in the mid-western states, Trump’s MAGA base.)
Besides, Beijing agreed to do more to control the export of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has triggered a crisis of overdose deaths in North America. In return, Trump agreed to halve that 20% levy, taking the average of US tariffs down to 45% and also suspended expanded restrictions on export controls over thousands of Chinese companies.
On the other hand, Trump agreed to loosen the licence applications for shipments of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips to China — a major climb-down. In fact, Nvidia, whose worth is estimated to exceed the UK’s GDP, is already in talks with Beijing.
Meanwhile, China is sticking to the two key sticking points in the Chinese firm ByteDance’s proposed divestment of TikTok America — size of ByteDance’s continuing stake and control of the algorithm. Significantly, in a notable departure, Trump didn’t raise Taiwan issue, which has been a contentious topic in high-level US-China exchanges in recent years.
Suffice to say, the Beijing meeting has been a moment of truth for the US, which has understood the limits to its leverage and vulnerabilities. Washington underestimated China’s tenacity and resilience, and success to divert US-bound exports to other mainly Asian markets. Facts speak for themselves. Trends show China’s trade surplus is likely to be larger than last year’s; China’s stock market has risen by 34% in dollar terms. On the contrary, the tariff-driven inflation figures touched the politically unacceptable figure of 3% in the US.
No doubt, China flexed its muscle and showed that its $12 billion market for soya beans is critical to US midwest farming interests and a potentially explosive issue for Trump politically. Similarly, US commerce department acted smart by introducing a rule-change in September to add, by some accounts, some 10,000 Chinese firms to Washington’s list of sanctioned companies. Beijing massively retaliated by expanding the scope of its export controls on rare earths, which would have a crippling effect on the US’ hi-tech manufacturing including cars, batteries and military equipment, such as F-35 stealth fighter or advanced missiles.
By some accounts, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, stunned by the imminence of the precipice, persuaded Trump that the price of confrontation with China was proving too high, and led the two sides to the face-saving withdrawal last week. The BBC caustically noted, “China has realised the hold that it has on the US and the rest of the world. How much is it willing to relinquish?”
Significantly, Beijing held back the MFA announcement of the Busan meeting until just a few hours before the event was due to begin.