Trump Invites Xi to a Show. What Did the US Get in Return?
This state visit has almost no substantive agenda — it is pure symbolism and optics. The question is not whether something goes wrong, but what the US is trading symbolism for in substance. So far: nothing.
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This visit has no substantive agenda at all
Gewirtz's judgment is that this state visit has "there is not a very deep substantive agenda at all." Trump invited Xi mainly because he wants to put on a show, wants the pageantry and the cameras, and incidentally to push something like the Iran war out of the news. For Beijing, this actually makes them less nervous — because a more confrontational meeting is what would make them anxious. But Gewirtz flags two things: Trump himself is extremely unpredictable, and Beijing has internalized that; and Beijing, watching the chaos in Washington, sees the American president himself often in a position they would never want Xi to be in — going to the wrong place, being photographed badly, being pressed by reporters. So the real question is not whether someone deliberately sets a trap, but whether things slip into the scenario they are trying hardest to avoid.
— Julian GewirtzSymbolism for substance: where is the trade
Gewirtz characterizes this visit as "we are in a space of symbolism and optics." He says that in US-China relations, trading symbolism for substance is itself a reasonable play: give Beijing the pageantry and cameras it craves, and get back something concretely useful to Americans and American interests. That was the model for US relations with the Soviets during the Cold War and after — the US gave symbolism, legitimacy, and that handshake photo, and got a step back from the other side on third-world countries or nuclear issues. But the problem this time is that the Trump administration does not even seem to have attempted to design a set of "deliverables." Gewirtz says "it doesn't even seem like they're trying." So what to watch is not where things go wrong, but "where is the trade happening."
— Julian GewirtzThe direction of concessions has been flipped entirely
Gewirtz points to a counterintuitive dynamic: concessions the US might once have given China have been flipped into "gifts" from China to the US. Pageantry and cameras are what Beijing wanted, but in Washington they are treated as Xi's visit being a concession to the US. The same flip happens on advanced semiconductors: the US used not to sell these things, so opening up products like the H200 would have been a huge concession; now, if Beijing agrees to buy, many in Washington would see it as Beijing conceding to Trump. Gewirtz says this flip keeps recurring, and the reason it matters is not to score the administration but because it reflects what happens when the power gap in superpower competition narrows — very small differences, interpersonal dynamics, can produce much larger displacements in the overall strategic picture.
— Julian GewirtzUS-China relations are also K-shaped, held up by the upper leg
Gewirtz uses the "K-shaped" idea for US-China relations: one upward leg is the leader-level channel — dense exchanges of visits, friendship, cameras; one downward leg is the competitive reality and the actions parts of both governments keep taking. The system is currently held up by the upward leg, but it is very fragile. He stresses the metaphor is not just a parallel analogy: saying "truce" or "detente" sounds too static, like a state already reached, but US-China relations are actually quite dynamic and quite unstable, moving in both directions at once. He applies the same K-shaped logic to China's economy — manufacturing and AI are flying, real estate and consumer demand are struggling, the upward leg is pulling the whole system forward, and the question is whether that holds as the K widens.
— Julian GewirtzThe bipartisan consensus on China policy has shattered
Gewirtz argues that Trump changed the tone of America's China discussion in the 2016 election and became the symbol and standard-bearer of that turn; but now, after helping create that turn, he has helped destroy or transform it. He cites David Feith's article in the Reagan Institute on "a new cold war in an age of doubt" — that great rethink on China was not as great as many assumed. Gewirtz's conclusion: if the political dynamics are more complicated than imagined and the bipartisan consensus some people talk about does not exist, then this is a moment of "incredible fluidity." He says he has no confidence in the direction of either Democratic or Republican China policy in the medium term, and Beijing has no confidence either.
— Julian GewirtzChinese officials cannot talk about risks they have no solution for
Gewirtz offers a different read on how the US should interpret Chen Yixin's article. On the surface, Americans are panicking about existential risk and China is panicking about regime security, and that is correct. But he says: heads of American AI model companies can talk at length about risks they have no solution for, and they all do; China's minister of state security cannot. In China, when you point out a risk in public, you are simultaneously saying "we, the Communist Party, see it, we will handle it, we have a solution." So the real question is: should we treat what we can see from Beijing as everything, or acknowledge there is more in the system that we cannot see. He gives an example from 25 years ago — Americans then predicted the internet would cause regime change in China, Clinton said that was like nailing Jell-O to the wall, and Beijing did nail the Jell-O to the wall: the Great Firewall.
— Julian GewirtzBeijing has not decided how to regulate open models
Gewirtz says that around Xi's speech and Chen Yixin's article, the outside world has been through several cycles of excitement and interpretation, but Beijing still has not given the single most important thing: how it plans to regulate open weight models spreading globally — models that carry both risk and strategic benefit for Beijing. He calls this "the trillion dollar question." Both speeches can be read as pointing in some direction, but the decision has not been made. His guess is that this is because Beijing itself has not decided, because things are changing too fast and the trade-offs are too large. He contrasts the Trump administration: it did not make a decision until Mythos came out, and then made another when Fable came out.
— Julian GewirtzWhat to prepare for is not China's decline but Xi's decline
Gewirtz says that a few years ago the "peak China" debate asked whether to start preparing for China's decline, and now most people think China's economy is at least for the moment on a relatively sustainable path. But he thinks the real question is not that, but "do we need to prepare for Xi Jinping's decline" — because people die, and modern Chinese history tells us that leaders in power for a long time change with age, certain obsessions become more prominent, behavior changes. By "prepare" he does not mean the departure itself, but acknowledging uncertainty: the outside world has treated Xi's tenure as fairly predictable, because since taking power in 2012 and 2013 he laid out a set of goals and largely pursued them. But he stresses the change could absolutely be worse for the US — "That doesn't mean he's going to mellow."
— Julian GewirtzNo one predicted the post-Xi era accurately
Gewirtz says much of his academic career has studied the decisive turning points of modern China: Mao's death, the turn around 1989, WTO accession and the transformation that followed. He notes these moments are often described as elite power struggles or high-level changes at the center of Beijing, but they are also — perhaps more so — transformations of Chinese society, driven not only from the top down but from the bottom up. On China after Xi, he lists several scenarios: linear continuity, more nationalism or more confrontation, even more openness or liberalization. But he says the clearest trend across these historical moments is "nobody got it right" — no one accurately predicted what would happen, change during transition periods is fast, and not everything changes on day one. To those confidently predicting what China will be like on day one after Xi, he offers a request: predict six months and one year out with the same confidence.
— Julian GewirtzIn their own words · checked verbatim
I think one of the things that is so remarkable about this visit is that it really there is not a very deep substantive agenda at all.
Julian Gewirtz6:06
But the question I think we have to be relentlessly focused on is not, you know, where could this go wrong or where could there be a protocol slip up? But fundamentally, where is the trade happening? Where are we getting substance for giving them symbolism?
Julian Gewirtz9:25
So the script is getting flipped over and over again. And to me, the bigger reason this matters is not simply scoring points in one way or another about the administration, but is that it reflects what can happen so easily in a superpower rivalry where power is getting close.
Julian Gewirtz11:37
But if you're the minister of state security in China, you cannot do that. You do not get to talk about risks you don't know how to solve. When you name a risk in public, you are naming it because you are also saying, we, the Communist Party, we see this and we're going to deal with it. We have a solution for it.
Julian Gewirtz31:24
what we do not have yet from Beijing is the one thing that actually matters most which is an answer about how they are going to regulate open weight models proliferating globally that carry many of these risks but also carry strategic benefit to beijing
Julian Gewirtz35:37
But the real question to my mind is not do we need to prepare for China's decline, but do we need to prepare for Xi Jinping's decline? Because all men are mortal.
Julian Gewirtz41:55
But actually, the trend that is clearest across these moments of, you know, major moments of historical contingency is that nobody got it right. Nobody predicted exactly what was going to happen.
Julian Gewirtz46:02
Figures
| Xi Jinping's favorability among the American public | 17% | 4:03 |
| Year of Hu Jintao's visit to the US | 2006 | 5:04 |
| Years since Mao's death | 50 (died 1976) | 36:39 |
| Years Xi Jinping took power | 2012, 2013 | 43:56 |
| Length of Chen Yixin's article | about one thousand characters | 33:30 |
Glossary
- K-shaped
- A diverging structure with one leg up and one leg down, used here for both US-China relations and China's economy.
- open weight models
- AI models whose parameters are publicly downloadable and can be deployed on your own.
- Memcon
- Memorandum of Conversation, the official US document recording the content of high-level talks.
- peak China
- The debate holding that China's national power has peaked and it will now decline.
How to listen
Founders and investors watching the direction of US-China relations, especially those who need to judge policy uncertainty and supply chain, semiconductor, and AI regulation risk.
The opening chit-chat about state dinner performers and divorce betting pools can be skipped.