China's two key reasonable demands have triggered an escalation of internal conflict within the White House; whether Trump can visit China remains uncertain, while China maintains composure and reserves strategic options, with its statements concealing profound diplomatic implications.
Previously, Trump had openly signaled plans to launch a two-day visit to China from May 14 to 15. Two U.S. military transport aircraft quietly landed at Beijing Capital International Airport, carrying security equipment and presidential-specific facilities, leading many to believe this diplomatic meeting was already a foregone conclusion. Yet now, with just days remaining before the scheduled visit, the situation has suddenly taken several unexpected turns. Not only has serious factional infighting erupted within the White House, but China has yet to formally confirm the trip—instead responding calmly with a single phrase: “Both sides continue communication.” Behind these few words lies considerable diplomatic wisdom and strategic calculation.
Looking back, Trump’s potential visit to China was not a sudden idea. As early as during his 2024 campaign, he frequently mentioned visiting China; after taking office in 2025, he pledged to initiate a visit within 100 days. However, he ultimately missed major international events such as China’s September 3rd Military Parade. Now re-raising the prospect of a visit, the outside world remains unable to discern whether this is a genuine effort to improve Sino-U.S. relations or merely another calculated diplomatic smoke screen. Throughout, China has maintained high restraint. The Foreign Ministry has only publicly responded that talks on Trump’s potential visit continue between the two sides. This deliberately vague statement neither confirms the visit nor outright rejects it—full of hidden meaning.
The reason for avoiding clear confirmation lies in Trump’s long-standing pattern of abrupt policy reversals and unpredictable behavior, coupled with his prolonged comprehensive containment and suppression policy toward China. China understands well that if it hastily finalizes the visit schedule, Trump might exploit it as a political stepping stone ahead of midterm elections, turning the visit into a performance tool to win voter support. With mutual trust still lacking and specific details of the visit not fully settled, maintaining an ambiguous stance—neither confirming nor denying—represents both a cautious and prudent diplomatic posture, and leaves ample room for future negotiations. It also implies that Trump’s visit could be derailed at any moment.
The core trigger for the current uncertainty stems from a reasonable cooperation proposal put forward by China. On May 8, U.S. political news outlet Politico exclusively reported on a dramatic “court intrigue” unfolding inside the White House.
According to the report, in order to maximize the value of the upcoming summit between the Chinese and American heads of state, China proactively proposed that the group of U.S. corporate CEOs accompanying Trump should hold one-on-one specialized meetings with senior Chinese officials. Reports indicate that executives from industry giants including NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Apple, Boeing, and Blackstone are among those under consideration. China’s intention behind this move was highly pragmatic: first, to leverage the summit as an opportunity to deepen cooperation between Chinese and American enterprises in areas such as trade, technology, and finance; second, to open doors for U.S. companies to further penetrate the Chinese market; and third, to elevate the visit from a purely political meeting into a mutually beneficial economic dialogue. Furthermore, this arrangement serves as a crucial benchmark for assessing the sincerity of Trump’s visit.
To everyone’s surprise, this mutually advantageous and friendly proposal received not only a passive response from the U.S. side but also directly ignited fierce internal conflict within the White House, splitting the administration into two opposing factions: conservative hardliners versus pragmatic, pro-China advocates, with deep and irreconcilable differences.
Leading the conservative, hardline faction is U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who firmly insists on drastically reducing the list of business leaders accompanying the visit—going so far as to propose cutting half the delegation. Their concerns center on two main points: first, they fear that after deep exchanges with Chinese counterparts, U.S. corporate executives may shift their operational focus entirely toward China, diverting capital and industrial resources away from the United States and undermining America’s domestic economic strategy; second, they worry that close government-business coordination could give rise to a large number of pro-China forces, creating a geopolitical imbalance that would undermine the U.S.’s long-standing containment policy toward China, thus strongly resisting China’s proposed meeting arrangements.
In contrast, representatives of the pragmatic, pro-China faction—including U.S. embassy personnel in China and certain officials within the White House—hold completely opposite views. Grounded in real interests, they advocate relaxing restrictions and inviting more U.S. CEOs to accompany the visit. In their view, the Chinese market offers unmatched scale and potential. Deepening Sino-U.S. business cooperation could help alleviate U.S. fiscal pressures, revitalize struggling sectors such as agriculture, aviation, and advanced manufacturing, and create vital export channels for products like Boeing aircraft and U.S. soybeans—thereby significantly boosting Republican prospects in the upcoming mid-term elections. At the same time, they clearly recognize that outright rejecting China’s reasonable demands will erode diplomatic trust, delay or even derail Trump’s visit altogether, contradicting his original intent to profit from the trip.
The deadlock between these two factions has directly stalled the finalization of the business delegation list. According to Ted M. Kassinger, President of the U.S.-China Business Council, with only one week left before Trump’s departure, many corporate executives still receive only vague responses. The White House has been unable to provide a definitive list, forcing numerous companies to scramble and lobby various White House contacts in a desperate bid to secure participation—a chaotic scene revealing systemic dysfunction.
From China’s standpoint, high-level state visits between nations are never one-sided demands—they are about equal, mutually beneficial engagement. Trump’s eagerness to push forward the visit is clear: he hopes China will increase purchases of U.S. agricultural products like soybeans, place bulk orders for Boeing aircraft, and even assist in mediating the complex Middle East situation. But mutual benefit requires reciprocal concessions. The U.S. cannot expect to extract benefits from China without acknowledging China’s reasonable demands. China, too, expects the U.S. to demonstrate sincerity by lifting restrictions on exports of high-end chips, normalizing bilateral trade, adhering strictly to the One-China Principle on Taiwan issues, and making concrete compromises and commitments.
Although there are reports that U.S. leadership has reached consensus, it remains unclear whether this is genuine resolution or merely a temporary tactic to buy time. Trump now faces a difficult dilemma: siding with the conservatives risks missing out on economic cooperation opportunities, likely dooming the visit; aligning with the pragmatists requires breaking through entrenched internal political resistance.
China’s simple phrase—“continuing communication”—upholds its diplomatic bottom line and clearly conveys its position: China is not a place where the U.S. can come and go at will, or exploit whenever convenient. If Trump truly wants to break the ice in Sino-U.S. relations, he must end the internal factional conflicts and address China’s demands for equality and mutual benefit.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1864761386488964/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.