Unquestionably, the global system is going through a critical stage in terms of the reformulations of its internal terms as well as its expressions and/or projections of futurability.

Nevertheless, a significant range of actors interact with each other to establish parameters, including “tacit rules”, that distance, in the time horizon, any confrontation of holistic annihilation or totalizing destruction of the world as such.

At the same time, the angular powers of the global order system are mostly engaged in geopolitical competition so that their respective statuses or quotas of power are not greatly reduced, thus hindering the dramatic and exponential decline in future history. No actor and no hegemon wants to consciously and actively lose the race for power, nor does it want to be subordinated to the geostrategic interests of another; therefore, every actor proposes, with agreements and mistakes, a significant number of measures that have the character, according to their vision, of “strategic and existential solution”.

In all the seats of international power, the conviction persists that the triennium 2025-2027 contains moments of bending and determinability of power projections in an evolutionary development of the system where chaos should not hegemonize the processes nor should chance drive the transformative structures.

Just as there are concerted efforts, on the part of all those power agents who planned the unilaterality in world geopolitical dominance, to detonate any innovative initiative and any action of changes in the global centers, a different rebalancing is being built from the one given after the post-war period of the mid-twentieth century, although this “ordering type”,  congruent with the inherent socio-historical and geopolitical characteristics of the twenty-first century, it is not yet fully thought out or meticulously implemented.

Without going into all the situational and contextual details, since they do not make the raison d’être of this opinion article, it is, in this operational framework, where the personal and high-profile meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will take place in the first days of the boreal spring of 2026.

It is also key to specify that Trump’s visit to China and, probably, a percentage of no less than 30% of the ideas and proposals that the president of the United States will discuss with his Chinese counterpart, should have been carried out in 2021 and 2022, but that Trump’s dishonest removal from the presidency, an operation that was engineered by his main enemies of power,  thwarted their execution.

At that time, progress was being made with a series of consensuses between these two heads of state, who are, to be honest, two fundamental figures in global politics.

Hence, in 2026, we are facing a dialogic and transactional reset of power between the formats of Trump and Xi Jinping and not so much in the face of something unusual or unthinkable from sound logic.

The anti-China factions that occupy key spaces in the US power ecosystem disapprove of Trump’s intention to speak directly with Xi and, above all, oppose a set of concessions that Trump will have to make to Xi if he really wants to “stabilize the relationship” with the president of China.

Trump, who frequently, and in an action aimed at the American elites and people, calls Xi “My Friend”, has different modes of behavior when he talks to the Chinese leader than he usually has with other international figures, but who are of a smaller stature than the chairman of the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China.

Trump wants to demonstrate to all U.S. elites that he is capable of getting a “grand bargain” with Xi with some mechanisms other than those applied by the Democrats and that his deal with China will prioritize the interests of the rich and powerful and the general people of the United States.

In a nutshell, Trump will tell them, “With me in charge of the ship, you guys earned more and better. I, with my instinct and my methods, obtained great results for them, solving some complicated and highly dangerous situations.”

For Trump, it is essential to obtain mutual commitments with Xi Jinping because of its direct implications for both the domestic space and the world landscape. In reality, Trump, whatever his personal motives, navigates between “relative unipolarity” and “practical multipolarity.”

So this sign should be noted: It is Trump who, first of all, travels to China and it is not the other way around. It is not Xi Jinping who is rushing to Washington. With this gesture, Trump is sending unmistakable signals that are surely prudently observed and productively channeled by Zhongnanhai.

During the weeks leading up to the historic US visit, Xi Jinpin made progress with the dual articulation consisting of his focus and agenda predominating at the apex of Chinese power and his country, the People’s Republic of China, consolidating the recovery of its global role and historical dominance.

In this Chinese year of “Fire Horse”, Xi Jinping made it possible to minimize the tendencies of the Hubei groups (aligned with the US elite of global management) and Shanghai (linked to the Anglo-globalist supranational) and that the genuinely nativist faction, that of Shaanxi, to which he belongs and leads, is the one that prevails in the final decision-making.

Xi, who is heading to renew his leadership for a fourth and even perhaps a fifth consecutive term – which is an unprecedented milestone in the People’s Republic of China – is controlling, as far as possible, the internal rhythm so that there is no “universal chaos” (within China) and so that there is a real readaptation of military power and the state itself to the priorities of this time.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a pillar and unavoidable actor of the Republic, is consubstantiated with Xi Jinping’s paradigm and vice versa.  It is the PLA that basically helped Xi Zhongxun’s son to reach the highest political function and so that the founding purposes of 1926 continue in the era of post-globalization and polycentrism.

 China is taking other significant steps towards its global leadership, but this does not imply that it will “divide the world” with Trump or that it has decided to enter into an open and maximum war against the United States.

Xi himself dismissed, during the Obama administration, this temptation and will not accept it now with Trump, nor will he accept it with Trump’s successor in the White House. Xi does not simplify the world. He is aware of all its complexities and has other ways of achieving results.

We emphasize that Trump and Xi Jinping are not supporters of the “Thucydides Trap”. Xi Jinping spoke clearly about it in September 2015, and in Washington, saying, “There is no ‘Thucydides trap’ in the world, but if the great powers make repeated strategic mistakes, they could create a ‘Thucydides trap.'”

It is these “repeated strategic mistakes” that both leaders are addressing and managing, from minor to major, so that the “Thucydides trap” does not destroy them.

Nor will the “Taiwan Factor” invalidate a basic agreement between Trump and Xi Jinping, and, before or after 2028, Taiwan will be reintegrated into the People’s Republic of China, despite the “illusions of pro-Atlanticist Taiwanese”.

For Trump, Taiwan is not a reason for war with China nor should it be an element that makes some fundamental agreements with Xi impossible.

Complete reunification will be the conclusion of a phase of Chinese national recovery, with the Xi project overcoming the two traps: Thucydides and “middle income”.

Throughout 2025, Trump thought of arriving in Beijing in better conditions with a large number of geopolitical advantages in his favor to get as many benefits as possible in the final negotiations with Xi, but he could not achieve it, at least, in his maximum pretensions.

It is true that Trump’s concept of power, in international positions, managed to limit, in some spaces, and in a conjunctural way, China, but it is also true that it did not manage to completely exclude the Chinese actor of those same dimensions and, even less, it overly limited China’s role in the entire global order. Clear evidence of this is the rapprochement with China of the United States’ traditional trading partners, states of the Global South and the intensification of Sino-Iranian cooperation.

In any case, the Trump who visits Beijing is a Trump with important results and he intends to make them count to the fullest.

Trump and Xi Jinping will also agree on the reconstruction economy, despite variations in its use, and, in light of this vision, will sign agreements of agricultural and general economic reciprocity to, firstly, de-escalate the situation of economic and state instability and so that, subsequently, there is stability – without war – in bilateral developments.

Trump and Xi Jinping will seek to make progress on such deals, likely based on the “TikTok America” model, which is seen by both sides as successful.

It should be clarified that this series of agreements does not signify the realization of a total strategic alliance because these pragmatic high-power compromises do not exclude geopolitical competition around the world, nor do they prevent the emergence of events and tensions in the 3030s and 2040s. Any macro agreement between Trump and Xi Jinping will have some fragility.

But, without a doubt, the US hegemon will be withdrawn from Northeast Asia and China will expand its global participation (including Latin America) although not in the terms and in the situation indicated by the architects and the propagators of Sinophobia.