San Francisco Frontiers - What does China want out of Trump's visit?

Here is what Beijing could be hoping to achieve:

- What does China want? -

Beyond diplomatic niceties and behind closed doors, Beijing will be looking for small, concrete achievements, analysts said, but will stay "realistically pragmatic" given Trump's unpredictable nature.

China wants a broad reset in ties but knows this would be unlikely, said Benjamin Ho from Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

Beijing and Washington had been locked in a blistering trade war in which US levies on many Chinese goods reached an eye-watering 145 percent.

The tit-for-tat escalation cooled off after Trump and Xi agreed in October to a one-year truce, with experts saying Beijing's baseline goal for the upcoming meeting would be to extend that agreement.

"What China needs is for Trump to follow through on his promise to engage, with at least a few concrete outcomes discussed at the highest level," said Yue Su from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Beijing will be satisfied with "targeted" results such as limited tariff reductions that would justify a measured rollback of its own tariffs or export restrictions, she said.

- What about the Iran war? -

The topic of Iran will be "hard to avoid" in the Trump-Xi meeting, experts said, but "this is not a domain China is eager to engage deeply on".

"The US is already raising pressure pre-summit on China by targeting its economic ties with Tehran," said Lizzi Lee at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Trump warned last month he would hit China's goods with a 50 percent tariff if it provided military assistance to Iran.

Beijing is a close partner of Tehran and has called US-Israeli strikes on Iran illegal, but it has also criticised Iranian attacks on Gulf countries and called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened.

However, China will not accept pressure from the United States to take action on Iran or Russia, over whom it "may have some influence but not decisive control", the EIU's Su said.

Beijing will also aim to avoid "additional complications" such as new US tariffs linked to China's trade with Iran being introduced into an "already complex relationship", Su said.

The Iran war will add "another layer of mutual pressure", Lee said, but the real negotiating terrain remains in trade and investment.

- What are China's bargaining chips? -

One of China's key bargaining chips is its rare earths -- metals crucial in the production of everything from smartphones to electric cars.

China's dominance in the rare earths industry, from natural reserves and mining through processing and innovation, is the result of a decades-long drive.

It remains China's strongest tool if meaningful concessions from the United States are needed, Su said.

Trump has shown that he "cares a lot about" rare earths, said Joe Mazur, a geopolitics analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China.

"I think that's sort of something that the US doesn't really have an answer to," he said.

Mazur thinks that China is "going to line up... quick wins" before the visit, which may include buying more US agricultural products or Boeing jets.

China, he said, might hope "that will put Trump and his team in a positive frame of mind when they're then discussing more complex, thornier issues".

- How has Beijing prepared? -

China has hedged against instability brought about by Trump through diversifying trade towards Southeast Asia and the Global South, and strengthening regional ties, said the Asia Society's Lee.

Beijing has also sharpened its legal and regulatory toolbox, she said, and "has a potentially more extensive playbook", as seen in the recent blocking of tech giant Meta's acquisition of AI firm Manus.

However, a lot of these measures, including diversification of energy imports, a push towards electrification and tech self-sufficiency, predate Trump's second term, Mazur said.

"If this meeting goes exceptionally well, it's not going to change the trajectory that China's on," he said.

"This push to America-proof the Chinese economy is going to continue, no matter what happens."

- Is China confident? -

Beijing will enter talks "cautiously confident", Lee said.

It believes it can absorb pressure better now and is more comfortable playing "a long game" than Trump, who is facing midterm election pressure, she said.

A visit to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin is also on the cards, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -- who met Xi in April -- saying it would happen in the first half of this year.

A back-to-back visit would send the message that "just because he (Xi) had a good meeting with Trump, it doesn't mean that Chinese support for Russia is going anywhere", Mazur told AFP.

"That relationship is rock solid."

B.Ramirez--SFF