The Art of the Slow Burn: How Beijing is Out-Waiting Washington
Summary from a China Daily Report:
At the China National Day reception in Washington, Ambassador Xie Feng used a telling phrase: he called for a “constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability” built on “respect, fairness, and reciprocity”
That choice of word is interesting
“Strategic stability” used to be Washington’s favorite term for managing the nuclear balance between the US and the Soviet Union…
Applying it to China is an admission of a new reality: Washington can no longer simply dictate, lecture, sanction, or bully Beijing into submission. China is now a peer power that demands negotiated guardrails.
While the Xi-Trump summit produced an AI “red phone” hotline, besides the exchange of niceties close to zero concrete agreements were achieved. Which reminds me of the old imperial strategy: keep talking, turn important issues into endless bureaucratic processes, and buy time hoping facts on the ground eventually move into your favor.
However, this time facts don’t move in Washington’s favor.
China’s domestic tech stack is rapidly growing. Take Huawei’s Ascend 950, which has massive production plans lined up, or DeepSeek’s latest open-source Huawei’s Ascend software toolkit (which is free to download) giving developers an alternative to Nvidia dependence. So far China hasn’t completely replaced Nvidia yet…but the writing is on the wall: US export controls have fostered the creation of the exact alternative ecosystem Washington wanted to prevent
The same pattern is visible across the Taiwan Strait. A dual-carrier presence east of the fictional “median line” and increased PLAN patrols are not merely military headline; it further normalizes PLA sovereignty operations across the strait and around Taiwan Island.
So the real strategic asset may not be the supposed friendly “rapport” between the two presidents.
It’s rather that President Xi is keeping Washington engaged forcing the Empire to focus on managing a relationship it can no longer dictate.
Xi also extracted two more Trump summits in one year, which is how you slow-boil a hegemon 🔥