October 29, 2025
BEIJING – Ahead of a widely expected, high-stakes meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Oct 30, the rhetoric from both countries’ officials has been upbeat.
On Oct 26, a fifth round of US-China trade talks in Malaysia produced a tentative agreement that covers further deferrals on tariffs, export controls, fentanyl cooperation and Chinese soya bean purchases – irritants that have produced twists and turns in the relationship over the past few months.
In a call with his US counterpart Marco Rubio on Oct 27, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the recent talks have proven that as long as both sides persist in resolving differences through dialogue, “it is possible to stabilise and move the relationship forward”.
Yet seasoned observers expect the upcoming summit will yield a short-lived honeymoon at best, with both sides yet to make significant progress on managing more fundamental differences, such as on Taiwan, technology competition and trade imbalances.
Associate Professor Hoo Tiang Boon of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, who specialises in Chinese foreign policy, told The Straits Times that reaching a deal at the summit – even a non-substantive one – would serve political purposes for both Mr Trump and Mr Xi.
“(Such a deal) would reinforce Trump’s political image as a supreme dealmaker. For China, they would have made the point that they are not to be pushed around – to impress upon the Americans that they can hurt them, as much as the Americans can hurt China.”
But US-China negotiations so far have not delivered substantive outcomes, he said, describing them as “more of an exercise in brinkmanship, and to test each other’s bottom lines and pain points”.
He said a deferral of restrictive measures on each other is the most optimistic outcome of the summit, adding that such meetings do not resolve the structural contradictions between the US and China.
There is a bipartisan consensus in Washington that China’s rise should be curtailed and this contradicts the goal of China under Mr Xi, he said.
The US and China have, since May, engaged in five rounds of bilateral talks, with the last one taking place over two days in Kuala Lumpur. These talks mostly addressed trade and tech frictions, and have been seen to stabilise ties and address business concerns, even if only temporarily.
For instance, after the Madrid talks in September, the US issued a 50 per cent “Affiliates Rule” later that month that significantly expanded the list of entities that would be targeted under US trade blacklists.
The move prompted Beijing to announce sweeping measures on Oct 9 that would significantly tighten China’s grip on rare earths. These measures, scheduled to come into force on Nov 8, were discussed in the latest Malaysia talks.
Professor Shi Yinhong of Renmin University, a long-time expert on US-China relations, noted that after the Malaysia talks, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the imposition of threatened 100 per cent tariffs on China was “off the table”, and China has promised to delay implementation of the new rules on rare earth controls.
But the fundamental issues remain unresolved, he told ST.
These include China’s strict controls on rare earth exports to the US and American restrictions on high-tech exports to China, China’s massive trade surplus with the US, and China’s failure to purchase goods and make hundreds of billions of dollars in direct investment in the US.
“The specifics of this new framework agreement will be difficult to finalise, much like the largely worthless Madrid framework agreement of Sept 15, as the issues are truly structural,” said Prof Shi.
“If China is indeed delaying the implementation of new rare earth export control rules for a year, as Bessent suggests, then China is making a significant concession.”
But he added: “There is absolutely no chance of a new major Sino-US consensus on the Taiwan issue. The key consensus – to avoid accidental military conflict between China and the US – was reached during the Biden administration.”
Beijing has long stressed that Taiwan is its No. 1 core interest, and has reportedly been seeking for the US to take a stronger diplomatic position – to say that it “opposes”, instead of “does not support”, Taiwan independence.
Beijing views the self-governing island as its own territory, and the US is Taiwan’s most important security backer. But Mr Rubio said the Trump administration will not be abandoning its longstanding support for Taiwan in its trade negotiations with China.
“If what people are worried about is we’re going to get some trade deal where we’re going to get favourable treatment on trade in exchange for walking away from Taiwan – no one is contemplating that,” he told reporters on Oct 25.
Senior fellow Denny Roy of the East-West Centre think-tank in Hawaii believes the main accomplishment of the last few months is that the US and China gained greater understanding of each other’s economic leverage.
Arguably, both demonstrated their strengths but also overreached, said Dr Roy, an expert on Chinese foreign policy.
“This process reaffirmed to both that they still need each other in the medium term, even if both will accelerate partial decoupling in the longer term.”
He told ST that any trade war resolution in 2025 will likely involve easily achievable goals with relatively few national security implications. “A far-reaching, lasting agreement that allows for greater and trouble-free bilateral trade and investment is unlikely.”