This is not how President Trump wanted to arrive in China.
When he delayed his long-awaited trip to Beijing by six weeks, Mr. Trump was betting he would arrive in Beijing this week having forced the Iranians to capitulate to his demands. He anticipated that by now the shattered Iranian leadership would have agreed to turn over its nuclear stockpile, forgo its atomic ambitions and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The message to President Xi Jinping would have been clear: Chinese declarations of a superpower in decline were premature.
Instead, Mr. Trump will arrive on Wednesday with many in China wondering how he got bogged down by a far lesser power in a war he started. Iran’s nuclear stockpile is exactly where it was, still under the rubble of an American bombing raid last June. The Strait of Hormuz, through which China gets more than 30 percent of its oil and a bit less of its natural gas, remains closed, with no obvious plan to pry it open again.
And Mr. Trump looks, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said two weeks ago, “humiliated” by a smaller power, having entered the conflict “with no truly convincing strategy.”
But the war is also tricky for Mr. Xi. For all of China’s global ambitions, he has been unable and unwilling to come to the aid of Iran, a political partner and key supplier, and has offered no plan of his own to resume the vital flow of China-bound oil and gas.
The result is that this is a summit like few others. The world’s two major superpowers, eager to demonstrate their dominance, are both bogged down and uncertain about how the Iran conflict will play out in the context of their struggle for military, economic and technological dominance.
The result is that the ambitions for this summit have been greatly scaled back. The honor guards and celebrations will remain intact, and Mr. Trump is bringing a dozen or so of America’s most powerful business executives with him, from Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX to Tim Cook, the soon-to-retire chief executive of Apple, to the top executives of Citi, BlackRock, Blackstone, Boeing and Goldman Sachs.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
