The emperor's new deal and the chairman's new tech plan
An extremely underwhelming meeting between Xi and Trump, details on Beijing's drive for tech self-reliance, plus more news and links.
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A man without a plan and a man with a plan
Underwhelming Trump-Xi meeting
October 30—Donald Trump met with Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea for a highly anticipated meeting that was supposed to result in a trade agreement. Trump told reporters flying with him back to Washington: “On a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12.”
Xi Jinping did not seem to enjoy the encounter as much, judging from his pained facial expression and silence as Trump babbled on during a pre-meeting press event. And all the meeting actually achieved was to pause recently threatened U.S. tariffs and delay the implementation of China’s new export controls on rare earths. It’s just back to the status quo of a few months ago. Trump himself did not use the word deal about the results of the meeting, saying on his Truth Social platform that he and Xi “agreed on many things, with others, even of high importance, being very close to resolved.” As with most Trump deals, details have not been released, but the two parties seem to have agreed on these points:
The U.S. will cut the “fentanyl tariff” by 10% and drop the other 100% tariff that Trump recently threatened, but leave a (very high) tariff of 47% on Chinese goods.
China will suspend, but not cancel, export controls on rare earths;
China will resume soybean purchases (but it’s not clear how much);
China continue to try to stop the sale of fentanyl precursors.
Update: According to a later statement by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the U.S. will also “suspend for one year a new measure that vastly expanded the number of Chinese firms facing tough restrictions on access to U.S. technology.”
There was no agreement on TikTok, nor on dozens of other issues that plague the two countries’ relationship.
Low expectations
The meeting did, however, lend an appearance of stability to the U.S.-China relationship. As historian and author John Delury writes: “I would actually credit both leaders for the language they used about the U.S.-China relationship in general,” and that Trump’s “basic message boiled down to the idea that it’s good for the U.S. and China to get along, and that there is room for both to succeed,” while “Xi said the same thing in more somber and realistic terms.” In this age of reduced expectations, that might count as a real success.
But our expectations should probably be reduced even further. The Trumpian rhetoric and tariff drama of the last nine months have accomplished nothing, except for concentrating Chinese Communist Party minds on the urgent need for technological and financial independence from the U.S.
Trade war 2025 has also made clear, to Bloomberg at least, “just how much stronger China has become since Trump’s first term in office.”
The minimally good vibes from the Trump-Xi meeting are unlikely to last long anyway. On October 28, while Trump and Xi’s protocol people were still scrambling to set up the meeting in South Korea, the American Federal Communications Commission voted to tighten “rules on telecoms gear made by Chinese companies deemed a national security risk, the latest move in a broader crackdown on Beijing.” China does not seem to have responded yet.
Trade aside, the U.S. has many other frictions with China that Trump seems happy to exacerbate at any time. As he sat in Air Force One flying to Busan to meet Xi, he posted a message to his Truth Social platform, name-checking China and saying that "because “of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”
A tale of two cities
Tonight, Trump is back in Washington. He and his wife, Melania, will “open the South Lawn of the White House to trick or treaters of all ages” and “hand out commemorative candies.” No doubt, the American president and his minions will spend the Halloween weekend fighting culture wars, enriching themselves, decimating government capacity, kidnapping civilians in the U.S., murdering civilians in the Caribbean, destroying the spirit of the U.S. military and intelligence community, trashing rule of law, alienating American allies, etc.
When Trump’s attention turns to China again, he might find that even some members of his own party are balking at his dealmaking. Yesterday, he dangled the prospect of allowing Nvidia to sell its high-end Blackwell AI chips to China. Today John Moolenaar, a Michigan congressman and chairman of the House Select Committee on China, a Republican, introduced a bill to further restrict sales of advanced chips “to countries of concern” (i.e. China).
Back in Beijing, further details emerged of the Communist Party’s 2026-2030 Five-Year Plan that was discussed last week at an important Party meeting (the Fourth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party). The planning recommendations 规划的建议 from the meeting call for “adopting extraordinary measures, and promoting decisive breakthroughs in key core technology research across the entire supply chain in key areas such as integrated circuits, industrial machine tools, high-end instruments, basic software, advanced materials, and bio-manufacturing.”
Bloomberg said that the “new Trump-Xi truce underscores how much stronger China has become since Trump’s first term.” Imagine how much stronger China will be in 2030, and what the U.S. is going to look like after another five years of Trumpian chaos.
Links and sources:
John Delury: While America slept: A Korean armistice in the U.S.-China trade war
Chinese government official website: 中共中央关于制定国民经济和社会发展第十五个五年规划的建议
Trivium: Beijing vows “extraordinary measures” for tech self-sufficiency
Sinocism Live video: Rush Doshi on the Trump-Xi meeting and U.S.-China Relations
Trade War by Dexter Roberts live video: The Xi-Trump meeting: temporary truce or big breakthrough?
Around the internet
Recommended essays, opinions, podcasts
Worth your time:
“The Fag-end of Autumn”: paintings and poetry by Lǎo Shù 老樹, a Beijing-based artist, writer, critic and professor in communications, curated and translated by Geremie Barmé on China Heritage.
“My earliest memory in life started with pain: a brutal beating.” That’s the origin story of “Director Fang” 房主任, a 50-year-old woman from a small provincial town who has become a standup comedy star in China. See Real Time Mandarin for details and Chinese language notes.
“Stop complaining, Hu Xijin. You played a part in this.” That is a Chinese internet user’s complaint about the nationalist tabloid editor and internet commentator Hú Xījìn 胡锡进 after reading his recent posts “criticizing what he describes as a ‘collective silence’ on Chinese social media [that] sparked intense discussion on Chinese and overseas websites.” China Digital Times explains.
“How Beijing’s Friendship Store preserves a piece of Chinese retail history by reinventing itself” is a brief tour, with photos, of one the capital’s iconic state-run stores on Following the Yuan.
This week in China in brief
AI-friendly cybersecurity rules
China has amended its cybersecurity law for the first time since it went into effect in 2017 (annotated translation of revisions here). The primary reason for the amendment seems to be to regulate AI and ensure Party control over information and content. But the amendments also call for supporting basic theoretical research, AI innovation, and the development of key technologies such as algorithms, and for strengthening infrastructure.
The new Syrian government’s foreign minister “is expected to visit Beijing for the first time in early November.” Tuvia Gering of Discourse Power says it’s a signal of “a broader geopolitical shift: Middle Eastern nations are increasingly looking east for a partner without strings attached.”
China and ASEAN signed a third update to their free trade agreement on October 28. “The 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations is China’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade totaling $771 billion last year,” notes Reuters.
Low-alcohol baijiu: Producers of 50%-plus alcohol traditional Chinese liquor “have been focusing on creating lower-alcohol versions since social drinking events with the strong spirit are declining,” reports Nikkei.
“The world’s first wind-powered underwater data center”—which state-owned Xinhua News Agency said sets “a benchmark for the green development of computing infrastructure—has been constructed in waters off Shanghai. “However, the transition from proof-of-concept projects to large-scale application presents significant challenges,” according to WIRED.