China‑US summit, what does Xi Jinping want from Trump?

Trump, don’t be fooled by the media!

Before this summit even began, a wave of opinion shaping started spreading from overseas Chinese communities, claiming that Xi Jinping would make massive economic concessions and compromises to secure Trump’s appeasement of the CCP on the Taiwan issue—that is, if the CCP invades Taiwan, the United States will not intervene. In other words, Xi is supposedly willing to trade huge economic benefits for Trump to sell Taiwan.

This wave of opinion shaping suddenly surged about a week before Trump’s visit to China, and then the narrative spread to U.S. media and overseas English media. It seemed the whole world knew what Xi was thinking and loudly urged Trump not to be duped.

However, I think this is precisely the CCP’s strategic propaganda offensive, intended to make Trump believe that Xi does not care about economic gains and losses, but cares more about Taiwan’s return, thereby misleading Trump into a strategic misjudgment during the U.S.-China summit negotiations and allowing Xi to achieve his true desired outcome.

Does Xi really place great importance on unifying Taiwan?

Maybe. But placing importance and daring to act are two different things. In CCP logic, no matter how important an issue is, nothing outweighs one crucial matter: the CCP’s control over power. The CCP may have intentions to use force to seize Taiwan, but the reality is that they lack both the capability and the courage. The military capability demonstrated by the United States in capturing Maduro and wiping out Iran’s senior leadership should already make Xi retreat.

Compared with this high‑profile Taiwan narrative, the CCP’s low‑key behavior on another front is astonishing. Even Trump said Xi was fine; their oil tankers were blocked in the Strait of Hormuz, yet Xi had no complaints to me. Is that normal?

Obviously not.

Iranian crude oil’s importance to the CCP is self‑evident; the Hormuz blockade has already caused a sharp rise in domestic oil prices and other chemical raw material costs in China. This is a huge blow to the CCP’s foreign trade, which relies on low‑price goods to capture overseas markets.

At the same time, the CCP released its Q1 2026 foreign trade import‑export data on April 14, claiming another big win. In short, the tariffs you imposed, Trump, have no impact on me, and I’m doing just fine.

Yet the reality is that we see Chinese self‑media users describing various economic downturns, difficulty finding jobs, and falling incomes. This starkly contradicts the CCP’s official narrative of booming prosperity and limitless potential. Whom should we trust? Often, the voices of individual users not controlled by the CCP’s propaganda department are closer to the true situation than the official story.

In summary, the CCP is creating, before the Trump‑Xi meeting, an atmosphere that economic issues are minor and not a big concern. This is the CCP’s strategic propaganda tactic: by manufacturing this illusion, it leads the Trump administration to believe that economic sanctions against the CCP will yield little return or effect, prompting the U.S. to lower its valuation of economic sanctions.

I hope the Trump administration will not be deceived by these CCP strategic ploys; the things they pretend not to care about are actually what they truly care about. The CCP does not dare to attack Taiwan, nor does it have the capability. Their military leaders have largely been purged; the entire army harbors hatred toward Xi, and he does not even dare to hand a gun to a People’s Liberation Army soldier. An attack on Taiwan would not make the CCP great; it would cause the regime to collapse instantly—a cost the CCP absolutely cannot bear. Xi’s strategic options have long excluded a military unification of Taiwan.

Now, what is driving Xi into a frenzy is the near‑collapse of the CCP’s domestic economy: massive local government debt, unfinished buildings across the country, unsustainable land‑finance, wage arrears and run‑aways, high youth unemployment, pension shortfalls for farmers, and so on. All these problems intertwine. The only relief the CCP can find is exports, the only project that truly brings revenue. If even this project fails, the CCP regime’s fall is not far off. Currently, Xi is certainly not thinking about a military unification of Taiwan, but about how to deceive the Trump administration so that the CCP can once again earn dollars by exploiting low‑human‑rights labor at home to ease domestic economic and regime pressure.

The United States has already been deceived once by the CCP’s “hide‑and‑wait” tactics; you should not fall for a second time.