Hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping's plane landed Thursday night at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where President Donald Trump waited for him on the tarmac, another plane touched down in Guangzhou, in southern China. It was a flight operated by Iran's Mahan Air from Tehran. It landed on the same day American sanctions aimed at grounding Iran's airlines worldwide took effect.
A number of countries in the region fell in line with that American demand, among them Azerbaijan, Turkey, Oman and Iraq. China did not. "We consistently oppose illegal unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law or authorization from the UN Security Council," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said earlier.
The stakes behind that defiance are considerable. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation published Thursday, Iranian customs data show roughly 1,300 shipments of dual-use components from China to Iran's Defense Ministry in the first half of the year, including parts for drones and missile guidance systems. Even so, the paper reported, Trump instructed senior White House officials to work to preserve good relations with Xi.
Trump made no secret of his enthusiasm for the reception he received in Beijing, having called the honor ceremony held there "amazing," and he staged a similar production of his own. In recent weeks he had boasted that the White House's new helicopter landing pad, a "work of art" in his words, would be ready for the visit, while lamenting that the sprawling new ballroom would not be finished in time.
Breaking from his usual custom of receiving foreign leaders at the White House, the president waited for Xi at the airfield alongside First Lady Melania Trump, underscoring the effort he is investing in honoring the Chinese leader. The Trumps walked hand in hand to the foot of the plane's stairs and shook hands with Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, as an honor guard lined the red carpet. Two B-1 bombers roared overhead while the national anthems of both countries played.
On Thursday, Xi is set to be received in an official White House ceremony, followed that evening by a state dinner in his honor whose guests include Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Elon Musk. Notably absent will be most of the CEOs of China's own tech giants. According to the South China Morning Post, their inclusion in the delegation ran into disputes between Washington and Beijing over Chinese investment in the US, pouring cold water on the American president's hopes for fresh capital. The Iran issue and AI are also expected on the agenda.
Melania Trump released the details of the presidential dinner, whose menu features "American ingredients with a subtle Chinese influence" and opens with a toast of Schramsberg "Blanc de Noirs," a nod to President Richard Nixon's 1972 "toast for peace" with Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing, the first visit by a sitting American president to the Asian empire and the moment that ended 25 years of diplomatic estrangement between the two nations. The gesture may also be a bid to soften Xi ahead of a difficult conversation.
On the surface, little has changed since Trump's Beijing visit four months ago. The war grinds on, and China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, keeps propping up Iran's economy. The Taiwan arms deal, a record $14 billion, remains frozen since the May summit but still functions as a bargaining chip. The AI race has only intensified, and the tariff-war ceasefire remains fragile.
Trump had hoped to end the war, which began in late February, even during his Beijing trip, but it has since become a genuine millstone around his neck. With the midterm elections roughly a month and a half away, Americans increasingly link the war to the surge in the cost of living, a failure Democrats have been quick to seize on.
"China sees the president as weaker than when he traveled to Beijing in May," Edgard Kagan, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, wrote this week. "The ongoing war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, with no reasonable path to resolution, have distracted Trump and damaged American credibility around the world," he added. "China is closely watching the decline in the president's popularity in the six weeks before the midterm elections, and hopes that will encourage him to avoid friction with Beijing," he said.
Xi is navigating his own turbulence. A sweeping military purge culminated in an investigation into Zhang Youxia, the military's number two and a former close ally, formally expelled from the party and the army this week, on top of a faltering economy and recurring rumors about the Chinese leader's health. "Like Trump, his political standing, too, would benefit from a stable international environment, which depends heavily on maintaining calm with Washington," wrote Scott Kennedy, also of CSIS.
Where the two leaders' previous meeting centered on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and blocking Iran's path to nuclear weapons, Washington has spent recent weeks instead trying to squeeze Iran economically.
Alongside the naval blockade, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced an "economic offensive" against Tehran's financial ties worldwide, now paired with the grounding of Iran's airlines, making China, a key economic partner of Tehran, more relevant than ever. Asked Thursday night whether he would raise the issue with Xi, Trump replied, "We'll see. We'll see. I'll talk about that and a lot of other things."
The price China extracts in return may be Taiwan. The island, which has functioned as a de facto state since 1949, is viewed by Beijing as a "renegade province" whose unification with the mainland ranks as its top national priority. In a statement released after the May summit, China said Xi had told Trump plainly that Taiwan is "the most important issue in China-US relations," warning that mishandling it would push the two countries "to clashes and even confrontations."
Taiwan and Iran may dominate the headlines, but it is quite possible that other forces will ultimately shape this superpower rivalry, chief among them the race for AI supremacy, now the subject of fierce debate over both its pace and its risks. "We can't stop, because the Chinese won't stop," said Bessent, who is expected to lead that dialogue with Beijing. "If China wins this, there's no day after tomorrow."
Washington has imposed export restrictions making it harder for China to obtain the most advanced chips from companies like Nvidia, pushing Chinese chipmakers to race to close the gap.
Beijing, for its part, wields leverage of its own, dominating the production of rare earth metals essential to robotics, electric vehicles and advanced weapons. It flexed that power last year by restricting exports during the tariff war and has since resumed some shipments, though Washington complains they are still being delayed.
The White House may once have envisioned détente during Trump's tenure, a genuine thaw with China echoing the one achieved with the Soviet Union, including nuclear arms limits Trump is eager to pursue with Beijing. But China consistently refuses talks on limiting its arsenal, and it appears that in the end the two sides will settle for avoiding confrontation – and give up on warming relations.
