Xi asks Trump if U.S. and China can avoid 'Thucydides Trap' at high-stakes summit

2026-05-14 01:46:28 ET

U.S. President Donald Trump met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing on Thursday morning, launching a high-stakes summit expected to span two days and focus on trade, tariffs, Taiwan, and Iran....

The relationship between the two countries is going to be “better than ever before,” Trump told Xi in his opening remarks, according to official broadcast footage. Trump, who also traveled to China in 2017 during his first term, said he and Xi have known each other personally longer than any other U.S. or Chinese president.

Speaking just ahead of Trump, Xi noted the global attention on the meeting, and said a major question for the two countries was whether they could avoid the “Thucydides Trap,” CNBC reported, citing an official English translation of Xi's Chinese remarks broadcast by CCTV.

The Thucydides Trap refers to how tensions historically between a rising and ruling power have often resulted in a war. Graham Allison, the Harvard professor who popularized the concept, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that he expects the trade truce Trump and Xi reached at their meeting in South Korea last fall will become a formal agreement.

Xi also said that Taiwan was the most important issue for U.S.-China relations, and if not handled well it would push the bilateral relationship to a “dangerous” place, according to state media.

Elsewhere, SK Hynix ( HXSCL ) surged on AI-driven optimism amid the US- China summit, nearing a $1T valuation and set to become only the second South Korean company after Samsung to enter the trillion-dollar club, with its stock up more than 200% this year.

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