China once again is trying to establish a stable, cooperative, or constructive relationship with the US. Current US president Trump, a charmer in direct talks, agreed in March to the general framing by China, of how the US-China relationship should be. Influential Chinese experts, at least in their public statements ahead of the summit meeting in the US of the two countries’ leaders, perhaps put too much emphasis on Trump’s word.
Prof. Da Wei is Director of the Center for International Security and Strategy CISS and wrote in Foreign Affairs on September 7, 2026 that China and the US had agreed their two countries should build a “constructive relationship of strategic stability”, and “it marks the first time in more than a decade that China and the United States established a consensus about how to define the relationship that leaders on both sides broadly recognize.”
One can’t help but remember the previous “consensus” reached in talks between China and the Biden presidency. The state council information office on March 19, 2022 published the literal sentence: “The direct cause for the current situation in the China-U.S. relationship is that some people on the U.S. side have not followed through on the important common understanding reached by the two Presidents” The “current situation” referred to tension and disagreement, after repeated US political and economic aggression.
If Biden’s government suffered from forces beside the president acting against the explicit spoken words of Biden, why does anyone in China expect different behavior under Trump? One may argue, Trump does have more awareness of what he says than the visibly impaired Biden who suffered of advanced dementia towards the last two years of his presidency. On the other hand, Trump is the far more obvious and notorious liar. People around Trump have repeatedly reported he didn’t read even security briefings, let alone more complex political analysis, and acted based on statements of the last person in the room with him.
His promises of “no war” and America first were severely broken during the first year of his second term with an illegal war against Iran, and even within his most loyal support base major figures like Marjory Tailor Greene, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have soured on his new course.
This doesn’t suggest Trump wants a war with China, but it makes clear how little trust can be put in the words of this specific president of the US. The trade war and the anti-Chinese tariffs were both intentionally started by President Trump. The reason that these aggressive economic measures have ebbed down recently isn’t a change of mind and more China-positive views by Trump, but the hard power China deployed, threatening counter-sanctions and economic measures to hurt the US, if tariffs weren’t reduced again. So, the benefit of seeking friendship with the US is dubious, to say the least. What about the price?
It is always positive when countries talk and negotiate. The worst case is a complete refusal of negotiations like Europe’s stance towards Russia. This makes any peaceful resolution of an armed conflict impossible. Therefore, China should absolutely seek talks with the US. And it is the long-standing good tradition of China to try to create a positive atmosphere before talks. But China must also be realistic:
The US doesn’t have a tradition of defining a relationship. As Prof. Da Wai in a recent interview with the influential think tank Center for China and Globalization CCG argues, China attaches great importance to such a shared definition. It is likely President Trump doesn’t even remember the term “constructive relationship of strategic stability”. Prof. Da Wei isn’t naïve, he also points out negative actions by the US against China in recent months.
But is such a self-centered view sufficient? The US has started an illegal war of aggression against Iran, heavily disrupted the global oil industry, acting increasingly as rogue nation internationally and is supporting ongoing aggression against the nation of Palestine by Israel that is so severe, it is awaiting trial for genocide – an accusation raised by South Africa with its experience of Apartheid, and shared by many Jewish Holocaust researchers. Is it in China’s interest to be friends with the US as the sole protector of Israeli behavior, even if the US offered conditional friendship?
A pragmatic mitigation against US trade aggression is certainly a good thing for the world economy and Chinese exporters as well as US consumers, as China’s Center for China and Globalization CCG’s professor Huiyao Wang has recently argued. But on the strategic level China can’t forever claim to be the leader of the developing world, the global majority, while staying neutral on the most polarizing event, which almost all countries outside the West condemn and even a majority of people in the Western countries find intolerable. Global soft power of China surely could benefit from a clearer international stance, a foreign policy with a clear political stand point, classic socialist values for international workers’ unity.
Socialist leaders through all times have spent a lot of time explaining an international perspective. Speeches by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are legendary to this day, equally Mao Zedong, Stalin and Lenin before them spent a lot of time elaborating on international relations.
China chose to hold its head down and instead go a pragmatic path of economic development. But this stance can’t be maintained forever. The contradiction between socialism which doesn’t grant access to US capitalist to all Chinese resources and the greed of the capitalist empire is eventually too great to ignore. The longer China waits by taking a stance with the global south, the lonelier it may be, when the clash finally escalates.
A strong Chinese position on NATO expansion, Palestine suffering, and French aggression in Africa could only help Chinese soft power and long-term development, even if it hurts some Chinese exporters in the short term. DPRK is a very far cry away from the power and prosperity of China, yet even such a small country dares to have a bold stance – as do small countries like Yemen and Burkina Faso with Ansarallah and Ibrahim Traore.
China’s moral obligation first and foremost is towards the livelihood of the Chinese people, I don’t deny that. But at some point, strategic alignment can’t be pushed further into the future anymore.
Editor: Zhiyu Wang
