The Delayed Trump-Xi Summit: Beijing's Relief and the Competition to Wield “Positional Power”

With President Trump’s planned trip to Beijing postponed as Washington focuses on the war with Iran, Host and TAG Senior Advisor Mira Rapp-Hooper checks in with TAG Partner George Chen, joining remotely from Beijing after the China Development Forum. They discuss the mood in China, why officials may be relieved by the delay, and what Beijing may seek from a rescheduled Trump–Xi meeting (now scheduled for May 14-15, 2026) — from tariffs and tech controls to investment and Taiwan. Mira then speaks with TAG Senior Advisor Evan Medeiros on where the U.S.–China rivalry sits in its early “boundary-setting” phase, why the trade war has become a supply-chain contest, and how “positional power” and a race to reduce vulnerabilities shape summit diplomacy.

What Comes Next with Mira Rapp-Hooper is produced by Rivan Dwiastono, executive produced by Lauren Dueck, with editorial input from Prashant Jha. It contains music by Cody Martin via Soundstripe. 

What Comes Next is a production of The Asia Group, and is powered by TAG AI, TAG's geopolitical decision engine for businesses.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

At least on the Chinese side, you know, we talked to some senior officials behind the scenes. They were actually, I wouldn't say happy, but they were actually relieved, you know, that Trump postponed the trip to you know five, six weeks.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Because in the United States, you have Trump who's a president that's driven by impulses and instincts. So I'm not sure that his desire for the summit is built on this sort of strategy of buying time in a competition for positional power.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

On today's episode of What Comes Next, we'll be thinking through the implications of the summit postponed. That is, the fact that President Trump is not on his way to Beijing next week to meet with President Xi Jinping of China, at least in part due to the ongoing war over Iran. I'll speak first with my colleague George Chen, who's partner and co-chair of the Asia Group's Digital Practice and manages our offices in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And we'll talk about how China is responding to the summit postponement. Then I'll speak with my colleague Evan Medeiros, who's the Penner family chair at Georgetown University and your senior advisor here at TAG, to talk about where we are in US-China relations a year after the trade war began. Let's give a listen. George Chen, thanks so much for being with us on what comes next.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Thank you. My great honor to be a guest.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

So I want to dive right in today. You are sitting in Beijing, where you've been attending the China Development Forum. You've been having some really deep conversations with lots of folks in the know. But of course, we were expecting that about a week from now, President Trump was going to be headed to China to meet with President Xi Jinping. And that summit has now, of course, been postponed with the United States extraordinarily focused on the ongoing war with Iran. The summit's been pushed back by at least several weeks. So the main question I want to ask you as we kick off today is what's the mood on the ground? And what is the expectation for whether or not this summit may go forward and when?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

That's right. I'm at right now in Beijing. Uh, and as you can imagine, you know, one of the questions on top of everyone's mind as uh Tiennan and I uh were attending the China Development Forum is whether you know Trump uh would finally you know come or not. You know, uh we heard you know the White House said you know uh he wants to postpone the visit. You know, this is not a cancellation, you know, probably postpone for five to six or seven weeks. Uh and I can tell you, uh, at least on the Chinese side, you know, we talked to some senior officials behind the scenes. They were actually, I wouldn't say happy, but they were actually relieved, you know, that Trump postponed the trip to five, six weeks, you know, mainly for logistics reasons. Uh and they do expect Trump to come uh in five, six, seven weeks' time, you know, see Trump in late April or early May. That's uh the expectation we got in terms of how much the Chinese side anticipates, you know, whether the next visit would come or not. Um among the foreign executives attending China's event for you know, we talked to a few. I think most of them do believe you know Trump still is very keen to come to China. It was mainly the Iran situation that you know forced him to postpone uh the trip, you know, as the president said uh in uh uh himself, you know, there's no trick. You know, I I think I'd I I'd like to trust the Trump for the for this time.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

So talk to me, George, a minute. Um, you know, that that was really helpful. Talk to me about why Chinese officials are relieved in this moment. Um, you know, you you pointed to logistics, and I think you and I were both tracking on opposite sides of the Pacific. The fact that as um, you know, the we were getting closer to the summit date, it seemed like there was a lot of preparation that had not yet been done. Um that folks on both sides were hoping that the deliverables, the preparations would be more mature than they were. So that might be one reason for relief. The the other thing I want to pull on though is I wonder if Chinese officials would prefer President Trump to come when there is not an active war going on in the Middle East. Um, you know, is this a complicating factor and would they prefer this visit take place after hopefully there has been some form of ceasefire?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

That's right. Yeah, I think the second reason you uh point out, you know, it's very spot on. You know, we did a summarys for our clients, you know, when they ask us about a postponement, as you can imagine, just use common sense. You know, if Trump came, you know, still you know, came and then the war is still going on. You can imagine, you know, President Xi, you know, would hardly give give him a big hug and then pretend everything was alright. The tune of the meeting would be more serious. Uh, you can imagine the two heads of states would definitely discuss Iran, which is not a happy topic. So somehow, you know, the summit would be sort of you know distracted from the main piece, you know, which should be about the US-China trade, you know, tariff and technology. I don't think the Chinese side really wants to see that. I would not call Iran an ally of China, to be honest. I know you know this is the turn, you know, some Western media will say, oh, you know, Iran's uh I think you know China becomes more and more pragmatic and self-interested. I will say, you know, Iran is definitely an important partner from both resources, you know, energy perspective. Um, but you know, China's China still has a lot of interest with Iran, right? You know, they want to get the the at least the Chinese ships to go through the street. So you can imagine if China if Trump came now and they asked Xi Jinping to help with Iran, or maybe even join him for some sort of you know, not really attack, you know, but support, that would make the conversation really awkward. So I think from that perspective, I very much agree with you. I think uh the Chinese side were quite uh relieved. You know, hopefully, you know, I think the president wants to finish the war and conflict as soon as he can. Hopefully by you know five, six weeks later, you know, the situation could improve.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Well, talk to me, George, about how the business community is seeing both the postponement and what might still happen when the summit is turned back on. The summit, of course, was expected to address a wide range of issues from um you know major tariffs to rare earth export controls to the possibility of welcoming new Chinese investment into the US economy. As the business community on the ground, you know, in Hong Kong, where you spend a lot of your time and also in Beijing grapples with the postponement and what it means. What are they hoping to see in the next few weeks when President Trump hopefully eventually does travel?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Yeah. Uh great question. I know this may sound ironic, you know, but the latest situation in Iran actually makes China even more attractive as a destination for investments, you know, for a lot of foreign companies. Uh and for Hong Kong, you know, as a wealth hub, you know, we begin to see uh a lot of rich people, families, you know, uh maybe temporary, maybe for a longer time. They try to leave the Gulf, you know, and then the first choice is they have is either Singapore or Hong Kong. And when they come, you know, they bring money. So, you know, the lawyers uh and the bankers uh have been pretty busy over the past few weeks in Hong Kong to deal with that kind of situation. You know, I know, I know, you know, nobody likes war, right? You know, but this is a very strange situation, you know. The unintended consequences, you know, is like Hong Kong is getting part of the wealth that is moving from the Gulf. Um uh in China, you know, during the China Development Uh forum, uh, you probably already heard you know, Premier Uh Li Chang, you know, uh he made he made a very interesting speech, right? He described China as like uh you know a haven uh for like safety, stability, reliability. Uh he didn't really direct the name America and then the Iran war, but everybody understands the context. This is why when the Chinese government tried to attract foreign investments, you know, they got to more bullets, you know, they got to more defense, right? To argue why people should come to China to invest. You know, if you look around, you know, uh Gaza, you Korean, you know, now Iran, you know, everything is related to America, you know, more or less. You know, that's sort of the narrative.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

And of course, George, this is a narrative that the Chinese government has really been leaning into um over the course of this second Trump administration, in particular since the Liberation Day tariffs. Um, you know, we saw just a couple weeks after April 2nd of last year, Xi Jinping taking a thor tour through Southeast Asia and kind of reminding partners that because of these tariffs, only China could be seen as sort of a guardian of the status quo and the great power who would promote rules and norms, right? Correct. Um you would see that same narrative being carried forward, um, particularly following these instances in which the United States decides to use force, whether in Venezuela or in the Middle East. Um that's carried through Li Chang's speech today.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Right. Yeah, totally. I think this is very much, you know, the Chinese perspective. And they also tried to make a point, you know, uh, there's no so such allyship, you know, uh in the context of what's going on, you know. And then the, you know, I think privately some Chinese officials even joke like the US foreign policy become very unstable, uh unpredictable, right? So in in the meantime, the China can provide a sense of predictability and the stability in in policymaking process, which is very important, you know, for business community. You know, we talked to uh to some clients and all of them are telling us, you know, look, you know, all the business community wants is a sense of stability. You know, no one wants any surprise if you want to be committed to do business in a country for five years or 10 years, even longer time.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Well, uh a sense of stability, uh very challenging to achieve in this geopolitical macro environment, uh, but certainly understand why the Chinese government is messaging it that way. Before we let you go, George, because I know it's already late at night for you, and you've been burning the candle at both ends with the China Development Forum ongoing. I love it if you could leave our listeners just with a sense of what you think a successful Xi Trump summit will look like.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

The Chinese side certainly uh has a very long uh wish list. Uh and I'm afraid you know the wish list is getting longer and longer, you know, if Trump wants to delay his trip further, you know, given everything going on. I think we can divide the wish list into two categories. You know, one is the political category, one is sort of you know the business or transaction category. Uh let's talk about the transaction category first. I think you know the Chinese government is getting more and more confident in dealing with uh the Trump administration, in particular President Trump himself, you know, for this term compared with the first uh uh turn when Trump was first time in the office, right? So the Chinese officials consider that Trump is a guy they can deal with from a deal-making perspective. So, what China, what did the Chinese side want? They want uh uh the US to continue to lift some restructuring, some technology, you know, uh advanced technology export control. Uh uh we expect uh you know the Chinese will give to uh H-20 uh imports you know for China exports from the US, but with some conditions. Uh the Chinese side is also very interested to uh find a way to invest in the US. You know, this is something you know the Board of You know Investment is is is about. Uh, I know they will also call it like the Board of Trade, which will be more about tariff and uh and then the restructurings. The Board of Investment is more about how to get some Chinese companies to go to the US to uh manufacture, right? This is what Trump wants, like manufacturing in the US, bring job back to America. And then the Chinese say, well, you know, we can create jobs in America if that's what you want. This is not going to be a peaceful journey. You know, there will be still ups and downs, but at least the Chinese want to kick off the process. The other very interesting is about aviation. Uh, I think Trump leaked the expectation a little bit, you know, in one of his tweets, you know, about you know what can GE do, right? You know, those aviation engines. You know, everybody knows you know uh China has uh its own ambition for the C919 uh uh you know homegrown aircraft. Um, you know, but you need a GE engine. You know, let's see if Trump can make some magic happen. That's the sort of the deal-making part. In the political category, easy. Uh I mean, not easy. I've think if if I can conclude in one word, that's Taiwan. So President Xi certainly has some expectation on Trump to go further. I think you know, you you know this better, you know, Mira, you know, you were in the White House. I think the official narrative, you know, uh from US side on Taiwan is you know, Washington does not support uh you know any unilateral change uh across the Taiwan street, right? And sometimes American officials will say we do not support uh Taiwan independence. What the President Xi wants is one step further. You know, why don't you make things clear? Just say it. You know, Washington doesn't uh you know, Front doesn't support Changer to oppose like you know, the US government opposed Taiwan independence. If Trump can make a compromise, you know, sort of, you know, uh make a consensus of that, you know, President Xi will consider that's a that's a big win in the uh in the political sense. You know, that's sort of you know the the wish list that I'm looking at.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

That would be a tremendous win for President Xi indeed. Um that's true. And I know this has been a back and forth, um, and President Xi has clearly been trying to advance it over the course of the last many months. I think the main question is is the US side going to grant such a massive political concession over Taiwan willingly, or is it possible possible President Xi will just try to get President Trump to say something like that informally and then find a way to publicize it? And of course, as George, you know uh better than any of us, uh these leaders have a chance of meeting as many as four times this year when President Chi uh pays a return visit to the United States and then they meet at APAC in the G20. So even if the Chinese side doesn't tick through this significant wish list all in the month of April or May, there's a lot of running room left this year.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Right. I agree.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

George Chen, it's been wonderful speaking with you. We'll let you get to bed. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Safe here. Thank you. See you next time. Cheers.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Evan Madeiros, thank you so much for joining me on What Comes Next.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Okay, great to be here, Mira.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

So, Evan, I was just chatting with our colleague George Chen. Um, and we were talking about the fact that a week from now, President Trump was supposed to be headed to Beijing for this long-awaited summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. I'd love to step back because it has been quite a turbulent year in US China relations and an unexpected one in many ways. And ask you, because you are not only a deep China expert, but so good at presenting us with trenchant ways of thinking about things. Tell us where we are in US-China relations in this moment.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Well, I don't know if this is trenchant, but it's at least the way that I think about it. So, you know, conceptually in international relations, we don't really have that many examples of sort of a great power competition. And um, the most obvious one, the most recent one, but also a highly imperfect one, of course, is the US-Soviet competition. But uh there are some things to take away from the US-Soviet competition. And, you know, one of them that frames how I think about the US-China competition is the fact that the US-Soviet competition had different phases to it. The 50s were different than the 60s were different than détente of the 1970s. And so I often ask myself, sort of, where are we in the arc of US China competition? And I don't know what that arc will be. It's important to situate the current moment, whether we're talking about Trump and She meeting or you know, the trade war, all of these are happening in a very early stage in the US-China competition. In other words, I think both sides are going through this process of trying to probe the boundaries of the competition. Uh where are we going to compete? How are we going to going to compete? What risks are you willing to run economically and militarily? Um what costs are you willing to pay? So building domestic coalitions at home. And so I think it's important to situate the conversation about the US-China competition in this idea that we're in a sort of 1950s-like um boundary exploration process.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

I totally agree with that. We're kind of defining the terms.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Exactly. That's a great way to put it. Defining the terms of what the competition is going to be. And of course, to make an obvious point for listeners of this podcast, in the early years, the US-Soviet competition was defined principally by two ideas. Number one, deep ideological competition and uh intensive military competition, both conventional and nuclear. And as an old Rand Corporation guy, right, I I mean Rand was created uh as a think tank for the Air Force to do systematic research on where we would put uh forward-based um bomber bases as part of this sort of early sort of setting the terms of the competition. And while that's not where the US and China are, you know, determining forward-based bomber positions or whatever, um, we've both been nuclear powers for decades. Uh, we are setting the terms, probing the boundaries.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Absolutely. And of course, the Chinese side actually has been experimenting with overseas spacing and what role that might play.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

That's right. That's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

So you see some of the contours of the great power whose power is still expanding, probing the question of how much the region versus beyond the region is going to be itself.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

That's a great point.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

Yeah. So that this is a great way to think about it. Um, so talk to me about the role that the trade war has played in this definition of competition and in particular what we've learned about US China competition over the course of the last year's trade war. It strikes me that one of the things that's really different about the 2025 to 26 period of US China competition is the degree to which the trade war has defined it. In many ways, from the first Trump administration to the Biden administration, there was more continuity than difference in the terms along which we define US China competition, even though I think the two administrations emphasized different tools, different terms, um, thought about messaging and creating coalitions around that competition very differently. But the key change I see over the course of last year, and as we've had into the second Trump administration, is maybe a de-emphasis on some of the other forms of competition, in particular allies and partners, the role that Taiwan plays, not even necessarily emphasizing the military balance as much, but leaning headlong into this trade war. So, how do you see this kind of micro phase of this first phase of competition? And what have we learned?

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah, I think that the um the trade war was probably the first big defining moment in this early setting the terms phase of the US-China competition. Um, I'm just finishing up a long academic article on this, and I have come to a few preliminary conclusions. Uh, number one is the trade war indicated that in this boundary setting phase of the competition, that economics and technology competition clearly are the top priorities. That's not to suggest there's not a military competition between the US and China. Number two, the trade war was less a conventional trade war for market access. It was really much more of a supply chain war am Ira. Um, and that's important because a supply chain war is a very, very different um sort of test of relative capabilities. Um and uh that's quite important because of the third point, which is the third point revealed that because of the uh the way the trade war played out, um what you see is an emphasis on both sides on doing two things, which is um number one, reducing vulnerabilities, and number two is generating leverage. Um and that clearly has become a top priority as a result of the supply chain war. And so where I sort of end up in this article is that the new emerging power dynamic between the United States and China is very much a race. It's a race for reducing vulnerabilities and generating leverage before the other guy. And in a very practical way, it's about the United States trying to reduce its vulnerability to China's rare earth controls as rapidly as possible while trying to generate as much leverage from its dominance of the semiconductor supply chain. And China's doing the reverse. And it's basically like who can get there first. So I think this race dynamic is really at the heart of the trade war. Final point here is in many ways what it signifies to me, and I think this is sort of a broader conceptual point for the, you know, IR folks among us, is that what the trade war really highlighted is that in today's US-China competition, it's not just about aggregate power. Who has the biggest GDP, who has the biggest military budget, but it's also about positional power, right? And um and it's a point that's very significant in the world we live in today because we tend to focus on aggregate capabilities, but positional capabilities, this idea of where what is your position in a global supply chain? And when you look at something like the global financial markets, American positional power is at the very, very top. It's at the apex, right? Whereas our position in rare earth critical mineral supply chains is actually weaker relative to China. So thinking about not just aggregate power, but positional power, and where we have these weird configurations where China has very substantial positional power in certain aspects of the global economy. The US has positional power in other aspects of it, totally separate from questions of military capabilities.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

I love this concept of positional power, Evan, because it dovetails with something I've been thinking about for a long time, which is the fact that even if you're looking at aggregate measures of power, the way that we would measure the balance of power now bears very little relationship to the way that we would have measured it during the Cold War. Of course, we still care about the military balance, right? But you and I both come from backgrounds as political scientists. And um, so we know that when you look at sort of a composite national power index in a data set or what have you, the different measures of power that political scientists often use are really the resources that a country needs to generate to fight a conventional war. Um, you know, you're looking at military power, but you're also looking at steel production, iron, things, things that really harken back to a totally different era of great power competition. And certainly those scores don't include things like the AI balance and how to measure America's advantages in compute versus Chinese advantages in hardware, nor do they encompass China's dominance of the rare earth supply chain. So it sounds like part of what you're saying is that in addition to the United States and China still being in a place where we're feeling out each other's boundaries and deciding kind of how and where we're going to compete, it's also that we're acknowledging that those areas of most intense competition are actually probably relatively new. And so even within buckets, we're defining the terms of how we're gonna compete.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Very well said. Yeah, very well said.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

I think it's a great framework.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

So that's why to me the trade war is so important, is because, you know, to go back to the Cold War framework. I mean, the Cold War had its defining moments. Um, the Berlin airlift, of course, the Korean War. And both sides learned something about each other. They learned about the competition. And I think that the uh trade war was one of these, one of these moments where we both learned quite a bit. And I think it's really going to privilege economic and tech competition. I think it's really focused the United States on this question of positional power, which means going forward, the competition is going to play out much more in domestic policy decisions. Um, how you're able to build up your own domestic capabilities in order to generate greater positional power. The reality is that America is still vulnerable to China in all sorts of supply chains, which, if the Chinese weaponized, would be very challenging. And I have to give a shout out here to my Georgetown colleague, Abe Newman. Positional power is not like a, you know, Evan Madeira's creation. This is Abe's argument about weaponized interdependence. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Abe and his co-author, Henry Farrell, are absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Across uh the suite of areas. So if folks are not following them, they they very much should. But I want to seize upon this idea, Evan, and talk about just briefly what we should expect to see and what you think the US side is trying to get from China in this moment and from a summit, if indeed it does go forward in the next several weeks, as George Chen has told us to expect. And I think many other analysts expect that it will go forward. You know, you mentioned the fact that, of course, over the course of this learning year, the US side has been really seized with the fact of China's incredible dominance in critical minerals and rare earth supply chains. Of course, this is something that we knew, but no administration has really taken action to start to winnow away at this level of dominance. So that's one major issue where presumably um there is some uh deliverable to be had. Um, but you also mentioned the fact that US dominance lies primarily in the semiconductor space, um, which sort of creates a little bit of a puzzle for why their current administration would agree to license the H200 chip um to the PRC.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Because of course that is puzzle is putting it politely, Mira.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Uh that is an area of considerable American advantage. And in all likelihood, one can imagine the Chinese trying to get more in the tech space out of the United States uh at the negotiating table in preparation for a leader-level visit. So, how do you see this competition for positional power playing out in a summit context? And what should our listeners be watching for?

SPEAKER_01 27:50

Yeah, I mean, I love having conversations like this because it's taking the conceptual and making it very, very practical, right? And so I think one of the consequences of the fact that you have this race dynamic emerging between the United States and China and this highlighting that positional power has become so important is that both sides in this race need time, right? They need time to reduce vulnerabilities and they need time to generate leverage. You know, famously, it's gonna take somewhere between three and five years for the US to um reduce its reliance on critical minerals, rare earths, permanent magnets from China. And so that's where the summit comes in, right? You use summit diplomacy to try and manage the process by which um both sides focus on generating leverage and reducing vulnerabilities. Trump clearly wants a summit. Um, Xi Jinping clearly wants a summit because Xi Jinping wants to play for time too. Time benefits both sides, but for different reasons. Right? For the Chinese, they want uh time to get their domestic economy in place. They want time to build an economy that's more resilient, and they want to build time that they need time to position themselves at the top of the technology food chain in the technologies they believe are gonna run the 21st century. Um, and so I think the summit's gonna come about because both sides want it. The Chinese have clearly signaled it's gonna be important. And what's interesting to me is the sort of jocking for position or jockey for deliverables in the summit. The US is very focused on very material deliverables. They want China to buy a bunch of American agriculture, buy a bunch of American planes, and President Trump's own personal agenda of getting a lot getting Chinese investment into the United States. And for Xi Jinping, I think that's sort of enough, right? In other words, if if that's the cost of sort of buying time and preventing more American technology controls on China at a time when China is still in the process of reducing its vulnerabilities, I think that's sort of, from the Chinese perspective, a fair, a pretty fair deal.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

It's really interesting to me that, and again, you made very clear, and I think it's right, that it they're four very different reasons, but that you can see both the United States and China for very different reasons believing that they have incentive to stabilize relationships in the short the relationship in the short term. Right. So that they can generate more leverage in the long term. This is certainly the narrative that I've heard over the course of the last three, four months from colleagues in the Trump administration explaining how their strategy is coming together. Um, but typically, you know, even though I think in this case they actually could theoretically both be right, there's a question of whether both great powers can be right at once. That is, do you really have an incentive to stabilize for now? Um, and that points to me to a point that we often make, which is that, you know, if there is some kind of warming, some thaw for a period of time, it's probably fairly fragile. Um, because your belief as a great power that stability redounds to your benefit can only be held so long as stability does redound to your benefit. So if one side or the other appears to be taking advantage of that, then the softening kind of falls apart.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, it's a very fragile truce, right? That's the um term everybody uses in Washington these days, or an uneasy calm, right? You know, pick your pick your metaphor. But here's the thing in the United States, it's a pr it's different than um in China, because in the United States, you have Trump, who's a president, that's driven by impulses and instincts. So I'm not sure that his desire for the summit is built on this sort of strategy of buying time in a competition for positional power, right? Um, you have some people in his administration that that clearly have a more strategic mindset. Um, and and right now those two coincide, and that's what's going to bring the summit together. The big question will will be whether or not this is the first of four meetings between these two presidents, or just the first one. Because, as I said, it's a race. And what happens if one country gets there before the other? Or what happens if the domestic political consensus in support of this, you know, uh this fragile truce, uneasy come, what if it falls apart? And of course, we have a big political event coming up in the United States in the form of the midterm elections. And um, you know, if one or both of um chambers of Congress flips, it's gonna present the Trump administration with a new political reality. And does China policy get sucked into the vortex? As a student of the US-China relationship, I'd say the answer is a pretty high probability yes, but let's see.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

I think you're probably right about that, Evan. I want to touch quickly before I let you go on the question of the United States war in Iran campaign that has now been going on for the better part of four weeks. Um, you know, despite the fact that at its opening it was advertised as another short, sharp use of force and what that means for American policy in Asia. You and I have been watching this region for a very long time. We are no strangers to analysts lamenting that the pivot or the rebalance is not being carried out as hoped, is somehow flagging in its implementation.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

I feel like I've been hearing that since like day two of launching the pivot in the Obama administration.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

I'm sure you have. But I do wonder uh if in this case we should be asking ourselves if this time is different. My personal view is that the United States still has an incredibly strong position in Asia, but also it is undeniably the case that this war is, in addition to many other things, a huge distraction for American foreign policy and a huge sink in terms of cost, in terms of military capability, in terms of high-level political focus. How should our listeners think about the durability of the American position in Asia at a moment where we are once again all eyes on the Middle East with no immediate end in sight, despite what the president may message?

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Yes, this is the million-dollar question, uh, Mira. Here's the way I think about it today. Uh, point number one, let's see how Iran plays out, right? I mean, we're only a few weeks into this. So let's see um what it means for long-term commitments in the Middle East. Um point number two is um, as good Asia watchers, uh one of the core strategic realities of the region that we focus on is that it's a net energy importing region, with the exclusion of producers of uh natural gas like Australia and Malaysia. And so I think we really need to keep our eyes on the fact that this Middle East crisis, unlike previous ones, like the invasion of Iraq in the mid-2000s, um, has generated a global energy security crisis that appears to be getting worse. And so I think when when I think about things like aggregate capabilities and positional power, um, energy security is now very rapidly moving up my list as I think countries in the region, including China, Japan, Korea, have to begin thinking about um energy security as one of the uh uh variables that they have to pay a lot more attention to. And does, in other words, does the United States contribute to their energy security neutral or detract from it? Um and so I think um uh that's gonna be very important about thinking about the the arc of power and American influence in the region, is how the US plays into the energy security dimension because of how reliant um so much of the region is on imported uh oil and gas. You know, when it comes to the pivot, um as I said, people have been criticizing it from like day two. Um it has a partisan dimension to it that's sort of hard to ignore. But, you know, to me, talking about the pivot is a little bit like focusing too much on dieting and not enough on nutrition. In other words, like the pivot can be a talking about the pivot can be a distraction from the real um issue we need to focus on, which is how to ensure that the United States maximizes its power and influence in the Asia Pacific. Because pivot or no pivot, the United States is an Asia-Pacific power. That is just a strategic reality that has its roots back in the 1950s with our alliances, our forward-deployed forces, and of course, the size and reach of the American economy. There's no question there are challenges to all of those. And the United States needs to step up, right? The most well-worn talking point in Washington is the fact that the US needs to modernize its economic strategy in Asia to coincide with, of course, the rise and reach of the Chinese economy. Um, but that said, I mean, sure, I worry about diversion of U.S. forces to the Middle East from Asia, but do I think that that fundamentally challenges America's position as an Asia-Pacific power? No. I mean, to me, the pivot was always an expression of a strategic aspiration. Um, in the Obama administration, we never had the illusion that it would somehow be done by the end of the Obama administration. You know, and uh certainly the deployment of um that the THAT battery and launchers from South Korea, the 31st Marine Expeditionary Force from Japan are not encouraging signs. Um but uh, and I worry about deterrence in the region. But really what we need to be focusing on is ensuring that the United States has a long-term strategy for maximizing its power and influence in the region. So this, it feels to me like this debate about the rebalance is very much a Washington debate. What we really need is a broader conversation about uh ensuring that the United States remains as relevant and influential in the region as possible.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

I totally agree with that analysis, Evan. But I also think that there is attention in what you helpfully teased out for us, which is the tension we've been living with since the pivot was inaugurated under the Obama administration. And that is when you are the theater of Americans' long-term strategic interest, you will always face tensions and trade-offs against America's short-term, immediate, seemingly more pressing strategic interests that at the end of the day may not actually be quite as strategic. Um, so it's another instantiation of the same set of trade-offs and tensions we've been grappling with for 15 years.

SPEAKER_01 39:19

I get that. Um, the reality is, and Mike Green brought this out in his great book about the history of US strategy in Asia, when the US gets most involved in the region is usually during crises. And that's unfortunate, but that's also a reality of um how the US historically operates. And so, you know, um unfortunately it may take a crisis for the US to really up its game in the Asia Pacific. But the reality is, and I used to say this all the time during during the Obama administration, you know, America's a global power. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. And I'm not talking about one stick of gum.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

Well, here's hoping the walking and the chewing gum kind of persist over the long haul.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

I'm optimistic.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Evan Maderos, thank you so much. It's been a great conversation.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Great to see you.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

As I reflect on my conversations with George and Evan, I am struck by how useful it is to think of US-China competition being in its first phase, in which both countries are still defining the terms along which they will compete. And in particular, Abe Newman's idea of positional power is helping us to understand how each of Washington and Beijing are increasingly identifying both their advantages and vulnerabilities. Similarly, I'm struck by Evan's point, which I agree with, that this period of definition and the advantages that the US and China are both trying to hone may actually give them incentive to try to stabilize this relationship in the near term. But I keep coming back to the fact that that truce does indeed remain extremely fragile, even as both great powers try to lean into the places of competition on which they intend to focus their energies. Today's episode was produced by Refund Dewey Astono, an executive produced by Lauren Deweick with editorial input from Prashanth Job. It contains music by Cody Martin via Soundstripe. What comes next is a production of the Asia Group and is powered by Tag AI, Tag's geopolitical decision engine for business. We'll see you on the next episode.