Most mainstream observers of the summit currently underway between President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump focused entirely on deliverable outcomes. Would the summit be a step toward improved U.S.-China trade ties? Would it produce a breakthrough between the U.S. and China on issues such as tariffs, high-technology, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)? These questions are reasonable ones to ask given that the U.S. and China are the two biggest economies in the world. However, they miss the biggest lesson of all from this summit. 

The biggest take away from the summit is that it is now impossible to ignore what Xi said at many occasions, that the world today is going through profound changes unseen in a century. 

What these changes really represent is a fundamental shift in the global balance of power. China is not just on the rise, it is the economic and geopolitical pillar of the changing world order. Mainstream U.S. media panicked over Trump giving Xi the "red carpet treatment" in large part because it was a symbol of what many elites in Washington view as their biggest nightmare: a strong China and a weak United States. 

Despite being fueled by Cold War misconceptions and zero-sum ambitions, the deep anxieties of U.S. hegemony's biggest champions are rooted in a stark reality. China's economic and political system has arguably become the most important in the world. China is the world's leading manufacturer and this is now true for the most innovative sectors of development. China accounts for nearly half of the world's installed capacity for solar and wind power and its rapid production of renewable energy has slashed prices by 80 percent globally. China is the undisputed world leader in most areas of high-tech development, including 5G & 6G connectivity, high-speed rail development, electric vehicles and robotics. It is the largest trading partner to 120 countries and regions or nearly two-thirds of the world. 

China's achievements are in large part a byproduct of stability. On the other side of the U.S.-China relationship, stability is in short supply. The Trump administration came into the summit under enormous political and economic pressure. Trump's approval rating has sunk to an all-time low of 32 percent in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. Energy prices have dramatically increased due to the ongoing Iran war and regional conflict in the Middle East, leading to popular resentment and a steep rise in the cost of living across the U.S. 

Trump remarked during his speech at the UN General Assembly several days before that "while others have spoken of peace, I have made peace." However, U.S. hegemony comes into the throes of an existential crisis. War with Iran has led to major setbacks across multiple domains. The U.S. military, despite its trillion dollar budget, is facing critical shortages in munitions. U.S. bases have suffered enormous damage. World energy markets have lost at least 500 million barrels of oil. 

This level of instability wasn't part of the plan. Early reports indicated the Trump administration hoped to use talks with Xi to press China on issues of economic and political concern. The goal was to leverage a weakened Iran and a growing U.S. economy against China. The crises facing the United States and its declining prestige in the world ultimately rendered this an impossibility. 

Can peace and harmony arise from chaos? The simultaneous rise of China and an increasingly unstable United States creates an opportunity to ease tensions for the betterment of the world. Whether this opportunity will be seized remains a question. China has long held firm to its position that the U.S. and China should be partners, not rivals. While it is an important step for Trump to meet with Xi again in such short order following his visit to Beijing in May, the U.S. track record on easing tensions is not a reliable one. 

Trump has boasted about ending seven to eight conflicts, but facts tell a different story. The U.S. has failed to bring any resolution to the Ukraine war despite Trump's promise to end the war. In the case of Iran, diplomacy itself was utilized multiple times by the U.S. administration as a spring board for military action. The U.S. war on Iran is now headed into its eighth month with little momentum toward a diplomatic settlement. It is therefore difficult for China, and the rest of the world for that matter, to trust U.S. attempts at diplomacy. 

The U.S. continuing to follow a path toward escalation is rife with consequences. A fractured relationship with China has already caused great damage to the U.S. in many domains. U.S. aggression in the Middle East and its trade war policies have eaten into the revenue of U.S. corporations and farmers, hurt the economy, and rendered the U.S. political system less trustworthy on the domestic and international stage. While China benefits from its bilateral ties with the U.S., it has developed a globalized yet self-reliant economy the growth of which cannot be credited to one country alone. Rather, China's advances in high-tech, manufacturing, and economic infrastructure are viewed as an outcome of the efforts of the Chinese people in cooperation with more than 100 countries. 

The U.S. and China make up the most important bilateral relationship in the world. What happens in this relationship impacts every aspect of economic, political, and military development in the world. The world only benefits when the leaders of the two biggest economies and arguably the most influential countries sit down together to resolve issues of common concern. High-level bilateral talks and state visits inject positive momentum and stability toward this end. The Trump-Xi Summit thus offers a potential model for what progress in the U.S.-China relationship could look like. 

For progress to truly take shape in a material sense, however, will take more than red-carpets and B-1 bomber flyovers provided as a gesture of good will by the Trump administration. It will take real effort on all sides and a fundamental shift in priorities, particularly from the U.S. A trade "truce" keeps the status quo stable, but the issues between the U.S. and China run far deeper than a trade dispute. The myriad of differences between the two countries ultimately encompass the question of what kind of world we as humans will live for the rest of the 21st century and beyond. And in the age of nuclear weapons, escalation and conflict have the potential to threaten the existence of human life itself. 

This makes the goal of peace between China and the U.S. perhaps the most important of all. Sanctions, tariffs, military encirclement and political interference foster not only instability and harm to the people and planet, but distrust as well. For the walls between China & the U.S. to fully come down, the Trump-Xi summit must be followed by concrete action that makes good on the commitments inherent to normal diplomatic and economic ties between two nations, especially nations as consequential as China and the United States. 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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