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Trump’s soft touch on China, in stark relief

2026-05-15 2:35 PM ET / CNN

Analysis by

Aaron Blake

President Donald Trump has long tried to portray himself as something of a strongman on China, though his tough talk and trade wars are often undercut by his remarkably accommodating nature toward Xi Jinping.

And that softer approach was on full display during Trump’s Beijing visit this week.

Trump’s trip — and his comments at the tail end of it — include some notable rhetorical and actual concessions to the Chinese government. He also explicitly walked back previous campaign promises to get tough on China.

Taiwan was perhaps the most prominent issue. It’s a tricky topic for any president, given the very nuanced US policies toward its independence (the “one China” policy) and defending it from China (“strategic ambiguity”).

And for much of the trip, Trump avoided saying anything substantive about it. Remarkably, Fox News’ Sean Hannity didn’t even broach the subject in his interview with Trump that aired Thursday night.

Then Trump held a gaggle with reporters aboard Air Force One on the trip back home, where he said he and Xi did discuss a pending $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, and that Trump would “make a determination over the next fairly short period.”

Even that noncommittal response is a pretty significant win for China, as CNN’s Jim Sciutto notes. The Trump administration has already sent $11 billion worth of arms to Taiwan. Trump also echoed Xi’s talking points about how Taiwan had been part of China for thousands of years. And even consulting China about the issue is remarkable; Ronald Reagan in 1982 declared that the United States would not seek China’s input on such arms sales.

“What am I going to do, say I don’t want to talk about it?” Trump said when asked about the 1982 document. “Because we have an agreement signed in 1982? No, we discussed arms sales.”

That wasn’t the only rhetorical concession China landed — despite Trump seemingly getting relatively little in the way of big deals, at least so far.

The US president also said he was considering lifting sanctions on Chinese companies that have been buying Iranian oil.

And he repeatedly declined to judge China for its espionage efforts. When pressed on Chinese cyberattacks, Trump downplayed it as a both-sides issue.

“You know, what they do, we do too,” Trump said on Air Force One. “We spy like hell on them too. I told him, ‘We do a lot of stuff to you that you don’t know about.’”

Trump had the same line when Hannity pressed him on China’s “nefarious” intent, saying, “Honestly, you know, they do things to us, and we do things to them.”

Finally, there are the major walkbacks on a pair of campaign promises: freeing Jimmy Lai and banning Chinese ownership of American farmland.

Trump in 2024 said that getting Lai, a former Hong Kong media tycoon who criticized the Chinese Community Party, released from prison was “going to be so easy.”

“I’ll get him out,” Trump added back then. “There’s no reason for him being there right now except that Xi doesn’t respect Biden and Kamala.”

But Trump sounded a very different note on Air Force One Friday, saying it would be easier to get a pastor released.

“It’s a tougher one, I’d say,” Trump said of Lai. “I did bring it up.”

And then there is the issue of China buying up American farmland. Both Democrats and Republicans support banning the practice, and the idea is particularly popular on the right. Late in the 2024 campaign, Trump pledged to ban it, saying politicians were “allowing our country to be sold out from under us.”

“Do you think China would let us go in and buy their land and do what they do? I don’t think so, OK?” Trump told Breitbart. “It won’t happen.”

The Trump administration has also said it would “aggressively” revoke Chinese student visas.

But Trump on Air Force One telegraphed a much softer line on both fronts.

On Chinese-owned farmland, the president said: “Look, it’s not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop? You want to see farmers lose a lot of money? Just take that out of the market.”

And on visas, he called the students “good students.”

“‘I don’t want any students’ is a very insulting thing to say to a country,” Trump said, adding: “But if you want to see our university system die, take a half a million people out of it.”

Trump is not exactly a studied diplomat. He likes to keep his options open. And it’s always important to look at what he does, not just what he says.

It could just be that he doesn’t want to put a damper on the trip by immediately embracing positions that pit US interests against China’s.

But Trump has shown that he’s susceptible to a good charm offensive, particularly from powerful world leaders. And on his priority list with China, cutting deals seems to increasingly rank higher than combatting its influence.

(That was perhaps most evident when his administration effectively ignored the law to save TikTok, even though Trump had once labeled TikTok a grave national security threat.)

It’s worth watching just how much the US relationship with China might actually change after this trip. Even if Trump aspires to a better relationship, that could be a tough sell with members of his party.

But regardless, he pretty much put to rest any lingering illusions that he’s a true China hawk.

President Donald Trump speaks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping after a visit to Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, on Friday.

Evan Vucci/Pool/Getty Images