ONE of the few revelations that emerged from last week’s Sino-US summit in Washington is that President Xi Jinping is “an expert on stone, aside from many other things, and he loves good granite”. At least that was the host’s verdict after the esteemed guest was obliged to examine the new White House helipad and the Marine One copter in which Donald Trump flits about. Xi’s reflections on the ordeal are unlikely ever to be revealed but, whether or not he’s actually a fan of granite, we do know that he’s an expert at being stony-faced — a feat that his American host, among many others, is incapable of emulating.
More seriously, though, it’s somewhat gratifying to see the top honchos of the world’s biggest military and economic powers playing footsie with one another. Trump’s first presidential campaign a decade ago was grounded in relentless hostility to China, and he has blamed the 2020 election outcome partly on Beijing’s interference — which is as absurd as his adversaries crediting Russia with the 2016 result. Noticeably, that plaint wasn’t revisited last week.
There was no joint statement at the end of what both sides officially declared to be a huge success. But whereas the mainstream Western liberal media has generally been unduly sceptical about specific achievements, Chinese state media has been celebrating the win-win accomplishments in platitudinous terms, such as “working in the same direction” and “respect, fairness and reciprocity”. That is vaguely reassuring, even though nothing is guaranteed. AI wasn’t ignored, but the scope for future discussions remains uncertain.
A decade ago, in one of his last documentaries, The Coming War on China, John Pilger laid out the prospects of an operation in the making since the 1950s. He focused in part on Bikini Atoll in the colonised Marshall Islands as a site where hydrogen bombs were regularly tested, with little concern for the inhabitants, in the quest for Asia-Pacific domination. Many decades later, the “pivot to Asia” was essentially part of the same pattern.
There is much that China and the US appear not to have discussed.
‘Who lost China?’ was a key factor in the purge of State Department officials who correctly predicted the Maoist takeover in 1949, which led to the Formosa ‘crisis’ that remains unresolved. Trump does not appear to be too concerned about what becomes of Taiwan and has thus far held back on supplying new arms to the island. Any future war over Taiwan would be both stupid and globally disastrous. But can it be avoided? That’s a question for an indeterminate future. Pakistan, like several other nations, has relied on both China and the US for decades. This is likely to continue. The perception of Beijing as an all-seasons saviour flows into a different challenge. What comes next might come as a surprise.
The difference between the US and China is that the former is floundering, while the latter, for all its flaws and tribulations, retains its edge. There is no guarantee that the US and China will remain on close terms for the remainder of the year, never mind the forthcoming APEC and G20 gatherings. Whatever Xi’s Washington ordeal might have accomplished, the US and China remain at loggerheads in various respects, and the possibility of a war cannot entirely be discounted. The consequences of such an eventuality are too horrible to imagine. Xi’s reception in the US has been seen as an unusual accomplishment. What does not necessarily follow is superpower bonhomie, despite the likelihood of two more Xi-Trump encounters before the year is out.
Whether the envisaged progress can be taken at face value is an open question. Leaving AI aside, there is much else that China and the US appear not to have discussed. The pronouncements from Beijing have broadly been more positive than the American pronouncements. Neither side, though, has offered clarity about what lies ahead. Neither technology nor Taiwan may be enough to persuade Trump to challenge China, but the post-Trump scenario remains hazy.
A US-China conflagration is unlikely but cannot be dismissed out of hand. As long as both sides see each other as adversaries, the prospect of eventual hostilities cannot entirely be discounted. Such hostilities would be a multifaceted disaster.
China has not stood out as a consequential opponent of the genocide in Palestine. Nor has it directly participated in Iran’s resistance to the US-Israeli onslaught, despite allegations about shared intelligence. China cannot be excluded from West Asia, but it has largely been silent about the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Precisely what kind of role China wishes to play in the region is unclear. Yet, notwithstanding the evidently meagre accomplishments of the summit, even the slightest hope of superpower rapprochement deserves to be embraced as a triumph of hope.
Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2026
