Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States on September 23-25 was a turning point in relations between the two countries. During the past 11 years since Xi’s first visit to the U.S. as China’s head of state in 2015, Washington has shifted its posture toward Beijing from welcoming a peaceful, prosperous China to treating it as a strategic competitor and revisionist power. Following an unprecedentedly tense trade war last year, the two leaders met in Busan, the Republic of Korea, in October 2025 and reached a tactical truce. Then, during U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit to China in May, Xi laid out a new vision for building a “constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability,” one with “cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences and promises of peace.” During the most recent state visit, the two leaders agreed to further define the constructive relationship of strategic stability as being based on “respect, fairness and reciprocity.”
The visit has produced eight deliverables and understandings. Three agreements are particularly worth noting. First, the two sides agreed to stabilize trade relations by extending the truce and through continued efforts to operationalize trade and investment councils. This not only ensures predictable trade flows between the world’s two largest economies, but also the smooth functioning of global supply chains. Second, the two leaders reached an agreement to open dialogue and exchange views on the benefits and risks of AI. They also agreed to establish a bilateral communication channel for AI incidents. The agreement of the two countries at the forefront of AI to establish dialogue and potential cooperation on AI safety is of great importance for safeguarding the development and use of this transformative technology. Third, the two leaders confirmed that they will support each other in respectively hosting the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting and the G20 Summit and plan to attend each other’s events. This means that the two leaders will be meeting twice more by the end of the year. It is a positive sign of constructive engagement and more agreements are expected to emerge from it.
Beyond concrete deliverables and understandings, the state visit itself, its pageantry included, carries real significance. It signals that both leaders attach real weight to the bilateral relationship and remain committed to dialogue as a means of constructing and preserving stability. Several moments captured this growing personal rapport, from Trump greeting Xi on the tarmac to both sharing a good laugh at the Presidential Walk of Fame, a gallery of presidential portraits hung by Trump in the Whitehouse. The state dinner, attended by more than 130 guests, including CEOs of leading U.S. tech and financial firms, offered a rare venue for direct engagement between both sides. The world breathed a sigh of relief as this high-stakes summit concluded on a positive note, given that the U.S.-China relationship remains the single most consequential force shaping global economics and politics.
Challenges, of course, remain: U.S. tech restrictions, the risk of secondary sanctions on China over trade with Iran, disputes over AI and the rare earths dispute all continue to strain the relationship. Still, the bilateral relationship is likely to hold relatively steady, with further agreements centering around trade and investment councils and an AI dialogue mechanism on the horizon when the two leaders meet again in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, in November and Miami, Florida, in December. But stability should not be mistaken for a state of rest. It is a dynamic equilibrium in which both sides manage existing flashpoints even as new ones emerge. Both sides will refrain from overt confrontation in the shared recognition that neither side can claim an absolute win; peaceful coexistence is the only viable option.
The author is Kremer Chair Professor of Economics at Willamette University, a non-resident senior fellow of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University and a research associate at Levy Economics Institute
Copyedited by G.P. Wilson
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