The international media consensus following the Beijing summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump was predictable: grand on optics, short on substance. Dismissing it on those grounds misses the deeper story of how the summit marked a turning point in how Washington and Beijing manage their rivalry, particularly over Taiwan.
To understand where this relationship is going, a brief historical detour is in order. In April 2001, then US president George W. Bush departed from the long-held script of strategic ambiguity by declaring in a television interview that the United States would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself”.
It was an unusually blunt claim. During his first run for president, Bush had explicitly framed China as a “strategic competitor”, heralding what many expected to be years of bitter, confrontational ties.
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That script was torn up just five months later by the September 11 terror attacks. As counterterrorism became the overriding priority, Washington began emphasising pragmatic cooperation with Beijing.
In this climate, Washington and Beijing worked together to restrain Taiwan’s then-leader Chen Shui-bian. Emboldened by Bush’s earlier support, Chen pushed a referendum on whether Taiwan should buy advanced missile defences if Beijing continued to aim missiles at the island.
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After private warnings apparently failed, Bush publicly rebuked Chen in December 2003 alongside Premier Wen Jiabao in Washington, declaring that the US opposed “any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo”. Although US officials denied it publicly, Bush privately described Chen as a “troublemaker”.