Will China Overplay Its Hand? How Beijing’s Confidence Could Shake Up the Trump-Xi Summit
Will China Overplay Its Hand? How Beijing’s Confidence Could Shake Up the Trump-Xi Summit Thomas J. Christensen March 6, 2026 Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 2026 Maxim Shemetov / Reuters Thomas J. Christensen is James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Pritzker Chair at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. From 2006 to 2008, he served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. At the end of this month, U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit China for a major summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the first of what may be as many as four meetings between the two leaders in 2026. The planned three-day summit comes on the heels of discussions the leaders held in October 2025 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Busan, South Korea, where they reached a fragile truce to ...