From Chips to Security, China
Is Getting Much of What It Wants from Washington
For
China, President Trump’s moves to loosen chip controls, soften U.S. rhetoric and
stay silent on tensions with Japan amount to a rare string of strategic gains.
Context
·
Recent
U.S. policy moves have given China a series of strategic wins.
·
The
Trump administration has softened rhetoric, loosened chip export controls,
and stayed silent on China’s pressure campaign against Japan.
Key Developments
·
National
Security Strategy (Dec 2025):
o
Recasts
U.S.–China rivalry as primarily economic, not ideological or security-based.
o
Prioritizes
a “mutually advantageous economic relationship” with Beijing.
o
Omits
criticism of China’s authoritarian rule or human rights record — a first in 30+
years.
·
Chip
Sales:
o
U.S.
approved Nvidia to sell advanced semiconductors to China.
o
U.S.
government to receive 25% of revenues.
o
Critics
warn this prioritizes short-term economic gain over long-term security.
·
Diplomatic
Posture:
o
Trump
muted criticism of China’s Communist Party.
o
Silent
on China’s intimidation of Japan over Taiwan support.
o
October
Xi–Trump summit led to U.S. tariff rollback after China leveraged rare earths and
soybeans.
Chinese & Global Reactions
·
Chinese
Analysts:
o
See
Trump’s approach as pragmatic, profit-driven, less ideological.
o
Viewed
as validation of China’s stance against foreign interference and universal human
rights.
o
Provides
Xi more room for regional assertiveness, including joint military flights
with Russia near Japan.
·
Western
Analysts:
o
David
Sacks (CFR): Trump seeks maximum negotiating space for Beijing visit.
o
Caroline
Costello (Atlantic Council): U.S. no longer prioritizes countering China’s push
for autocracy.
o
Some
warn U.S. strategy still aims to contain China’s rise, but less overtly.
Challenges & Risks
·
Japan: Facing Chinese military pressure for supporting
Taiwan; responded with joint U.S.–Japan exercises.
·
Critics: Fear U.S. concessions weaken long-term security
and embolden China.
·
Future
Outlook:
o
Short-term:
More stable, predictable relations.
o
Long-term:
U.S. still focused on maintaining dominance and countering China’s rise.
o
Possible
Trump strategy: “Hide strength, bide time” — regroup economically and technologically
before reasserting pressure.
Takeaway
Trump’s
transactional, profit-driven diplomacy has shifted U.S.–China rivalry from
ideological confrontation to economic competition. While China sees this as a strategic
victory, analysts caution the U.S. remains intent on preserving its global dominance,
with current concessions possibly setting the stage for a longer-term contest.
In
its rivalry with the United States, China has racked up a series of wins in recent
weeks.
The
Trump administration has softened its criticism of China’s Communist Party in a
strategy document. It has reopened a channel for high-end chip sales that Washington
once treated as untouchable. And President Trump has held his tongue as a key U.S.
ally in Asia faces Chinese intimidation for backing Taiwan.
For
Beijing, the shifts in Washington’s approach suggest that Mr. Trump has less of
an appetite for confronting China over ideology, technology and diplomacy. Some
commentators in China have hailed these developments as irrefutable signs of American
decline and Chinese ascendancy.
Mr.
Trump’s decision on Monday to allow some advanced chips to be sold to China, the
prominent Chinese technology executive Zhou Hongyi said on social media, showed
how China’s unstoppable technological rise had “pushed the United States against
a wall.”
The
Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, pointed to the White House’s new national
security strategy, which focuses more on the Western Hemisphere than China, as “evidence
of the U.S. acknowledging its relative decline in power.” Washington has realized
“it cannot afford the costs of prolonged confrontation” with China, the nationalist
blog Jiuwanli similarly concluded.
And
Mr. Trump has remained publicly silent as China has mounted a pressure campaign
against Japan, a U.S. ally, over that country’s support for Taiwan. Beijing has
summoned Japanese diplomats, canceled flights, curbed
tourism and stepped up military flights near Japanese airspace, including with Russia,
to highlight its displeasure.
This
is Mr. Trump’s more transactional diplomacy in action, according to Chinese analysts.
In this less hawkish, more pragmatic approach, China is seen not as a threat to
U.S. supremacy that must be contained, but as a major nation to be negotiated with.
That
shift was laid out plainly in Mr. Trump’s national security strategy, released last
week. It recast the U.S.-China rivalry as chiefly an economic contest and not a
struggle over security or political systems. The strategy’s stated priority: establishing
a “mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing.”
And
unlike previous presidents, Mr. Trump showed no interest in the longstanding American
project of promoting democracy in China. For the first time in more than 30 years,
the national security strategy did not criticize China’s authoritarian rule or press
Beijing to uphold human rights — sentiments echoed by presidents from George H.W.
Bush to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and even to Mr. Trump himself in 2017, during his first
term.
The
strategy showed that “China’s push to make the international system friendlier to
autocracy is no longer on our list of priorities,” said Caroline Costello, assistant
director at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, who analyzed
previous national security strategies released since 1986, when Congress began requiring
U.S. presidents to submit their foreign policy visions.
Xin
Qiang, a U.S.-China expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that the strategy
showed that the Trump administration had finally realized that “trying to change
China by playing the ideological card is neither possible nor feasible.”
“At
least since Trump took office in his second term, he hasn’t shown a strong ideological
drive in his China policy. It’s what we call ‘profit-driven,’” he said, adding that
this was good for China.
Mr.
Trump’s transactional bent may help explain why his administration reversed export
controls on critical artificial intelligence technology that can help China economically
and militarily. It granted Nvidia, the American chip maker, permission to begin
selling its second-most-powerful semiconductor to China. The U.S. government would
receive 25 percent of all the revenues from the sales, Mr. Trump said in a social
media post, a trade that critics said prioritizes short-term economic gain over
long-term American security interests.
The
latest moves by the Trump administration, in some ways, extend the conciliatory
posture Mr. Trump struck at his summit with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in October.
That meeting resulted in the United States walking back tariffs after China flexed
its leverage by withholding exports of rare earths, critical minerals needed for
almost all modern manufacturing, and soybean purchases.
The
two leaders spoke again last month, after which Mr. Trump said he had accepted an
invitation from Mr. Xi to visit Beijing in April.
David
Sacks, a fellow in Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Mr. Trump
was clearly thinking about that Beijing meeting when the White House released its
national security strategy. “I think he likely wants to have maximum negotiating
space in that meeting, and perhaps more pointed language on China he might view
as constraining that space,” he said.
For
Beijing, the shift from containment to competition amounts to a strategic victory.
It validates China’s argument that countries should not interfere in the matters
of other states or impinge on their development, and that there is no such thing as universal human rights that all countries
should protect.
It
also gives Mr. Xi more room to be aggressive in the region. China has repeatedly
criticized Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, for saying that a hypothetical
Chinese attack on Taiwan could incite a military response from Tokyo. China escalated
its campaign on Japan on Tuesday, by sending Chinese fighter jets and bombers alongside
two nuclear-capable Russian bombers near Japanese islands.
When
Japan’s defense minister complained that the show of force
by China on Tuesday had been a threat to his country’s national security, a spokesman
for China’s Defense Ministry shrugged off the criticism,
describing the exercises as a “demonstration of the determination and capability”
of his country and Russia to deal with regional security challenges. (On Wednesday,
Japan and the United States conducted a joint military exercise over the Sea of
Japan to demonstrate the strength of their countries’ alliance, Japan said.)
Chinese
analysts say Mr. Trump’s more pragmatic approach to China should herald a more stable
and predictable chapter in the relationship. In response to Mr. Trump’s national
security strategy, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week that Beijing
also wanted “mutually beneficial economic relations” and hoped the United States
would continue working with China to “shrink the list of issues” between the two
countries.
But
others point out that any let up in U.S. pressure on China is only temporary. Meng
Weizhan, a social sciences researcher at Fudan University, wrote in an article for
the Qianhai Institute for International Affairs in Shenzhen that the Trump administration
was still targeting China, just less overtly.
“It’s
possible that over the next three years, Trump’s policy toward China will not be
excessively aggressive or hard-line,” Dr. Meng wrote. “After he leaves office, you
might even think his presidency ‘wasn’t all that bad’ for China.”
But,
according to Dr. Meng, Mr. Trump might even be taking inspiration from the dictum
made famous by the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping: “Hide your strength and bide your
time.” By focusing on regrouping and rebuilding America’s economic and technological
edge, the United States will be able to better compete with China in the future.
“The
underlying essence of the United States’ strategy toward China has not changed:
to maintain its own dominant position, and to prevent and contain China’s rise,”
he wrote.