US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a bilateral meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on May 14, 2026.
Alex Wong | Getty Images News | getty images
The United States and China agreed to build more cooperative ties at their summit in Beijing on Thursday, in a high-level meeting filled with friendly expressions between the two countries, which have battled for years over issues ranging from intellectual property and human rights to technology and trade.
Here are five key points based on the details of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting.
1. New position
According to Beijing’s official English readout of the summit, Xi and US President Donald Trump agreed to develop a “constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability”. He said Beijing would consider it as a guiding framework for the next three years and beyond.
According to the readout, Xi said the strategic position would be based on cooperation and “measured competition” with manageable differences, while he stressed that the framework should be translated into concrete actions.
“This signals a period of ‘managed stability’ that will last for some time,” said Tianchen Xu, senior economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. While there are reasons for friction to continue, “there will be a guardrail, and things will not spiral out of control on either side as they did around 2025.”
2. Pre-summit meeting: ‘Balanced and positive’
According to Xi, trade envoys from the two countries reached “overall balanced and positive outcomes” at a preliminary summit in South Korea on Wednesday. That delegation was led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Chinese Vice President He Lifeng.
“The two sides should work together to maintain this hard-won positive momentum,” Xi said. Beijing welcomes America’s deeper commercial engagement, he said, and “will further open the door to China’s openness.”
The comments came as a dozen business leaders from some of the largest US companies joined Trump for his visit, including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
3. Deepening cooperation
Both sides should make better use of diplomatic and military communication channels, Xi said. They also called for deeper cooperation in economic and trade issues, agriculture and tourism.
4. Taiwan: ‘The most important issue’
Xi maintained his harsh language for Taiwan, calling it “the most important issue in US-China relations.”
The stakes, he said, could not be higher: “Handle it well, the relationship will survive; handle it poorly, and there will be conflict or risk of conflict between the two countries.”
5. Other issues
The two sides also discussed the Middle East conflict, Ukraine and the crisis in the Korean Peninsula, according to the readout, which did not give further details.