Trump, Xi appear intent on keeping deep differences over Iran war from overshadowing China summit

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Tuesday is set to leave for Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping after weeks of trying, and failing, to persuade the Chinese government to use its considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to US terms to end the two-month-old war or, at the very least, reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has veered between venting that China, the world's biggest buyer of Iranian oil, hasn't done more to get the Islamic Republic in line, and acknowledging that Xi's government helped de-escalate the conflict last month by nudging Tehran back to ceasefire talks when negotiations wobbled.





But ahead of the US leader's high-stakes visit, the White House has set low expectations that Trump will be able to persuade Xi to change China's posture.

Instead, the administration seems determined not to let differences on Iran overshadow efforts to make headway on other difficult matters in the complicated relationship, ranging from trade to further Chinese cooperation to block exports of fentanyl precursors.

"We don't want this to be something that derails the broader relationship or the agreements that might come out of our meeting in Beijing," US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Bloomberg TV last week.

The US administration sanctioned China ahead of the trip

Beijing publicly insists that it wants to see the war end, and has been working diplomatically behind the scenes to help its ally Pakistan push to broker a peace agreement.

It has also sent a "subtle message of discontent to Iran" for closing the Strait of Hormuz, and to the US for its blockade of Iranian shipping, said Ahmed Aboudouh, a specialist on China's influence in the Middle East with the London-based Chatham House think tank.

"They are very cautious, risk-averse, and they don't want to be involved in anything that would drag them into something that they don't consider their problem," he said.

In recent days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have stepped up their calls for China to use its influence to help reopen the strait, through which about 20 per cent of the world's crude flowed before the war began.

The State Department announced on Friday that it was sanctioning four entities, including three China-based firms, for providing sensitive satellite imagery that enables Iranian military strikes against US forces in the Middle East.

Earlier, the Treasury Department moved to target Chinese oil refineries accused of purchasing oil from Tehran, as well as the shippers of the oil. The sanctions cut off the companies from the US financial system and penalise anyone who does business with them.

Beijing has called the sanctions "illegal unilateral pressure" and enacted a blocking statute, passed in 2021 and never used until now, that prohibits any Chinese entity from recognising or complying with the sanctions.

Ahead of Trump's arrival, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week hosted his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in Beijing. The Chinese foreign minister used the moment to defend Iran's right to develop civilian nuclear energy.

Xi has also offered implicit criticism of the US over the war. He has said that safeguarding international rule of law is paramount, adding it "must not be selectively applied or disregarded," nor should the world be allowed to revert "to the law of the jungle."

Both China and the US want to avoid a return to a tariff war

Trump, on Monday, downplayed differences with China over Iran and underscored that Xi wants to see the strait reopened. "He'd like to see it get done," Trump said of the Chinese leader.

Like Trump, Xi also has plenty of reason not to let differences over Iran impact other facets of the relationship, analysts say.

China imports about half its crude oil and almost one-third of its liquefied natural gas from Middle East countries affected by the closure of the strait, according to China's General Administration of Customs.

Beijing wants to guard against further deterioration of the US-China relationship, something that would add further challenges to its economy.

"I think for Xi, a win is continued stability without surrender," said Craig Singleton, senior director for the Foundation for Defence of Democracies' China programme.

"He wants the summit to validate China's superpower status, preserve the tariff predictability, and to reaffirm that Washington has to deal with Beijing on Beijing's terms."

Yet, since the US and Israel launched strikes in late February, there have been difficult moments between Trump and Xi that threatened to set back the relative stability in their relationship.

China has long supported Iran's ballistic missile programme and backed it with dual-use industrial components that can be used for missile production, according to the US government.

Last month, Trump threatened to impose a 50 tariff on China after reports that Beijing was preparing to deliver a shipment of new air defence systems to Iran, but later backed away from the threat, claiming that he had received written assurance from Xi that he would not provide Tehran with weaponry.

Days later, Trump said cryptically that the US Navy had intercepted a Chinese vessel carrying a "gift" for Iran. He has not offered further explanation.

Both Trump and Xi may be eager to avoid creating dark economic clouds, as they did last year, when the two powers appeared on the precipice of a massive trade war.

Trump had set tariffs on Chinese goods at 145 per cent, and China announced a further tightening of rare-earth export controls that would have hurt US industry, before the governments backed off from inflicting maximalist penalties on each other. The two sides reached a fragile truce in their long-running trade disputes in October.

Trump and other administration officials have made the case that the conflict, particularly the closure of the strait, has caused greater harm to China and its Pacific neighbours than it has to the US, which is far less dependent on Middle East oil.

"China is an export-driven economy. That means they depend on other countries to buy from them," Rubio told reporters last week, making the case that it was in China's interest for Iran to let traffic resume.

"You can't buy from them if you can't ship it there, and you can't buy from them if your economy is being destroyed by what Iran is doing," he said.

But for now, China has shown little interest in wading deeper into the conflict and has appeared reluctant to be seen siding with Washington.

"It will be difficult to get the Chinese deeply involved under any circumstances," said Kurt Campbell, a former deputy Secretary of State during the Biden administration and chairman of The Asia Group. "They will want to be careful because they can see political quicksand as well as the next guy."