The big questions hanging over the Trump-Xi meeting in China

On 20 February, a White House official confirmed that US president Donald Trump would be travelling to Beijing the following month to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Top of the agenda: the US-China trade war. One week later, Trump approved joint strikes with Israel against Iran, starting a new war in the Middle East. Its ramifications have spread far beyond the region and caused alarm in Beijing. The presidential summit was postponed. Now the highly anticipated meeting between Trump and Xi is expected to take place on 13-15 May in Beijing , and China’s agenda has shifted. Beijing is keen to make sure that the sky-high tariffs that Trump announced last year – which reached as high as 145% before the two sides agreed a truce in October – do not return. But now the more pressing concern is to find a way to reopen the strait of Hormuz, through which half of China’s crude oil passes. Although China has been more insulated from the energy shock than other Asian countries, thanks to its diversified energy mix and large stockpiles, the risk of a global recession – which the International Monetary Fund has warned is a possible outcome of the Iran war – is a bigger threat to China’s economy. About a fifth of China’s GDP comes from exports. If the rest of the world is no longer able to spend money on goods, China will suffer. …