Overview

Background

Xi Jinping was born on June 15, 1953, in Beijing, into a politically influential family. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a senior revolutionary leader who was often out of favor with the party and government, especially before and during the Cultural Revolution and after he openly criticized the government's actions during the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. The father's political vulnerability shaped the son's early life in decisive ways. During the Cultural Revolution, with his father purged and out of favor, Xi Jinping was sent to the countryside in 1969. He worked from 1969 through 1975 as a manual laborer on an agricultural commune in the largely rural Shaanxi province, and he developed an especially good relationship with the local peasantry, which would aid the wellborn Xi's credibility in his eventual rise through the ranks of the CCP.

Xi studied chemical engineering at Tsinghua University and later earned a doctorate in Marxist theory and ideological education. Unlike many leaders who emerge from national prominence, Xi built his career from local administrative positions, steadily gaining experience at township, county, municipal, provincial, and eventually national levels. Xi began climbing the rungs of the CCP power structure in the late 1970s, and his tenure in the positions he held then was undistinguished. Rather than undertaking any significant initiatives, Xi's record suggests he laid low and focused on avoiding both scandal and offending any potential CCP power brokers. Xi Zhongxun's political resurrection following Mao's 1976 death helped pave the way for his son's entry into provincial leadership positions.

Xi has served as president of China since 2013 and as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party since 2012. Xi consolidated power through a wide-ranging anti-corruption campaign, tighter control over the Chinese Communist Party, and the expansion of his influence over the military and state institutions. At the 2017 Party Congress, Xi's personal political philosophy — "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" — was entered into the party constitution alongside those of his predecessors; unlike his two previous predecessors, Xi is identified with his philosophy by name, placing him on a level with Mao and the revered reformist Deng Xiaoping. In 2018, the National People's Congress amended China's constitution to remove the previous limit of two consecutive five-year terms from the presidency, clearing the way for Xi's indefinite rule.

Public Role in the Second Trump Administration

The Trade War and Its Escalation

The fiercest competition between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in 2025 seemed to involve who could stop U.S. imports from China the fastest. Trump started early and went big, launching his second trade war soon after taking office in January and raising tariffs on China by 145 percentage points by April. By June, U.S. imports from China were roughly half their levels of a year earlier, falling to depths not seen since the financial crisis of 2009. Xi responded by restricting Chinese exports.

Xi weaponized rare earth permanent magnets and certain semiconductors in 2025, with consequences that were severe for carmakers and workers worldwide who remain heavily dependent on China for such vital inputs. Twice in 2025, Xi nearly brought the U.S. automobile industry to a halt by cutting off companies' access to essential Chinese inputs, with nearly 6.5 percent of U.S. manufacturing workers employed in just-in-time automotive supply chains at risk of severe disruption.

Diplomacy and Partial Stabilization

Trump and Xi met in South Korea in October 2025 for the first time since Trump's second term began. Though there was no formal agreement, the two sides extended a trade truce reached in Geneva in May 2025 by another year. Trump agreed to lower tariffs previously used to pressure cooperation on combating the fentanyl crisis, while China committed to purchasing U.S. soybeans, after halting imports earlier that May, and also agreed to postpone by a year its proposed export controls on rare-earth minerals. The United States and China took further steps to defuse their trade war by the end of November 2025, reducing their tariff rates to 30 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

During a tumultuous 2025, the United States and China proved how much they could hurt each other in a trade war. By May 2026, Presidents Trump and Xi were meeting in Beijing to repair some of the damage. Experts assessed that complete decoupling of the world's two biggest economies remained unlikely, and that high tariffs, rare earth restrictions, and technology export controls remained major sticking points.

Security and Taiwan

Alongside the trade conflict, Xi continued a pattern of military signaling in the Taiwan Strait and broader Indo-Pacific. In April 2025, China conducted the Strait Thunder-2025A exercises across the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and surrounding waters, testing capabilities in regional control, joint blockade, and precision strike. The Pentagon's China Military Power Report, released in December 2025, concluded that despite extensive leadership purges and ongoing disciplinary investigations across China's military and defense industry, China continues to make progress toward Xi's 2027 "Centennial Military Building Goal" and associated warfighting capabilities against Taiwan.

A Philippine Navy report from early 2026 noted increased Chinese aggressiveness and force deployment in disputed South China Sea waters in 2024 and 2025, with China likely to continue these coercive activities as it seeks to consolidate sea and air control of the South China Sea and deny strategic positions to the Philippines, a U.S. treaty ally.

Recent Developments

China's military pressure on Taiwan remained generally stable in the first half of 2026, with no major escalation in military aircraft or naval vessel activity. Tensions ran lower than at the end of 2025, owing largely to the multiple opportunities for direct meetings that the U.S. and Chinese leaders arranged in 2026. During the mid-May 2026 summit between Xi and Trump, from May 13 to 17, daily sorties by Chinese military aircraft detected around Taiwan fell to an average of three, with zero sorties on May 14 and 15 — compared to a daily average of 7.5 sorties for the first half of 2026. The pattern underscores Xi's use of military activity as a calibrated diplomatic signal, capable of being turned up or down in coordination with high-level political engagement.

The U.S. Supreme Court's February 2026 ruling against many of Trump's 2025 tariffs forced the administration to recalibrate its entire trade strategy. In March 2026, the Trump administration announced new investigations into allegedly unfair trading practices by China and numerous other economies under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The May 2026 Trump-Xi summit in Beijing represented the most significant bilateral engagement of the second Trump term to date, though observers noted that the underlying structural tensions — over technology, supply chains, Taiwan, and military posture — remained unresolved.

Outlook

Xi enters the second half of 2026 having demonstrated that China can absorb significant economic pain while retaining leverage through control of rare earths, manufacturing inputs, and export channels. The Geneva truce and subsequent diplomatic contacts have stabilized the surface of the relationship, but the structural competition that defines it has not diminished. Xi's extreme ambitions include meeting the requirements of his Centennial Military Building Goal of 2027 — his capabilities development deadline for China's armed forces to achieve a full battery of military operational capabilities against Taiwan. How the Trump administration responds to that deadline, particularly given its simultaneous effort to negotiate trade arrangements with Beijing, remains one of the central unresolved tensions in U.S. foreign policy.

A decade of conflict between the world's two biggest economies has left U.S.-China trade greatly reduced from the boom times of the 2000s and 2010s, forcing companies to regroup. Many American firms have shifted production out of China to countries like Vietnam and India, while Chinese firms have scrambled to find new customers in Europe and Southeast Asia. But the two countries are finding that they still need each other. Whether Xi and Trump can convert tactical truces into durable arrangements — or whether the competitive logic of the relationship will reassert itself — will shape the international environment for the remainder of Trump's second term and well beyond.