U.S. President Donald Trump landed at Beijing airport on Wednesday evening for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The visit is expected to be marked by an elaborate reception, judging by the heavy security presence already in place since the morning around the cordoned-off hotels where the Republican leader and his entourage will be staying.

Trump’s visit to China follows years of tensions and marks the first time in almost a decade that a leader of the world’s largest economy has set foot in the second largest. The last time this happened was in 2017, when Trump himself visited China.

The meeting will serve to gauge the balance of power between the two superpowers after a 2025 marked by tariffs, in which the two leaders pushed the trade war to the limit — right to the brink — before sealing a fragile pause last October in Busan, South Korea. After a first night of theoretical calm, with no scheduled agenda, Xi will receive Trump on Thursday morning at the Great Hall of the People, the gigantic building reserved for major political events.

On Wednesday, Trump appeared at the door of the enormous presidential aircraft at exactly 8:08 p.m. in Beijing, in what seems like a highly calculated gesture to start off on the right foot — the number 8 is considered lucky in China — and from the top of the stairway, pumped his fist in his characteristic manner. On the ground, he was received by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, while 300 Chinese teenagers waved flags from both countries to the rhythm of a military march.

Economic issues are expected to dominate the face-to-face talks, including discussions on trade imbalances, transactions, and investments; Trump and Xi will most likely address the thorny issue of the war in the Middle East; and Trump already said on Monday that he also plans to broach what may be China’s most existential issue — Taiwan — raising some alarm on the self-governed island that Beijing considers an inalienable part of its territory.

With the U.S. attack on Iran still raw and its lightning operation in Venezuela still smoldering, an opening has emerged for China to put its interests regarding Taiwan on the table.

Trump has travelled to China accompanied by a large delegation of multinational executives, underscoring the economic focus of the trip. Trump sees the meeting as an opportunity to expand business and investment, in line with what the two governments’ envoys — Vice Premier He Lifeng and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — set out on Wednesday during a last-minute preparatory meeting in Seoul.

Mid-flight, Trump offered clues about the friendly tone he intends to strike during his visit to the “Great Country of China,” as he called it on his Truth Social platform shortly after departing the United States. In a post, he listed the striking lineup of executives travelling with him: from his rekindled ally Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) to Tim Cook (Apple), as well as Larry Fink (BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia, the chip designer and the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization).

“I will be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic, and help bring the People’s Republic to an even higher level,” Trump wrote. “I promise, that when we are together, which will be in a matter of hours, I will make that my very first request. I have never seen or heard of any idea that would be more beneficial to our incredible Countries!”

In addition to calls for greater openness — a recurring theme in dealings with China — the real estate magnate is also expected to press Beijing to use its influence with Tehran to help stabilize the fraught situation in the Middle East, where the fragile ceasefire is on shaky ground.

For China, the meeting offers a chance to project an image of stability, composure, and cooperation, after standing firm against Washington’s tariff pressure by leveraging its dominance in rare earths.

Beijing sees itself with room to manoeuvre and partly victorious in this latest trade battle. Many analysts expect it to use Washington’s weakness to push for a reduction in arms support for Taiwan and a shift in the long-standing ambiguous language underpinning the delicate balance in the strait.

“China understands that Taiwan independence would change the status quo. That is why it will ask Trump to openly declare that the United States opposes Taiwan independence,” says Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing.

The issue of arms sales was already made clear by Xi Jinping in a phone call with his counterpart in February, shortly after Washington approved in December the sale of a landmark $11 billion weapons package.

In his readout of what he described as an “excellent” conversation, Trump largely glossed over Taiwan. The official Chinese readout was far more emphatic: Xi told him that the U.S. position on Taiwan “is the most important issue in China-U. S. relations,” and stressed that China “will never allow Taiwan to be separated from China.” Xi issued a warning: “The U.S. must handle arms sales to Taiwan with extreme caution.”

Wang summed up Beijing’s position this way: “China has asked that the U.S. not sell arms to Taiwan; otherwise, we cannot purchase the so-called three Bs,” he said, referring to soybeans, beef, and Boeing aircraft— three of the economic demands Trump is bringing to the meeting. He believes the upcoming midterm elections, and Trump’s need to shore up part of his electorate, will tilt the balance in Beijing’s favour: “I don’t think he will sell [the arms].”

A change in the language of any statement “would probably be considered Xi’s biggest victory,” noted George Chen, an analyst at The Asia Group, on Wednesday during an online discussion about the summit. Evan Medeiros, also from The Asia Group and a former Obama adviser on China and Asia affairs, listed among the “risks” to watch — not only Taiwan, but also China’s “reluctance” to help on Iran.

But there are signs it may step up. Late on Tuesday, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, held a phone call with Pakistan’s foreign minister — the country leading the peace talks — and urged him to “step up mediation efforts, and contribute to properly addressing issues related to opening the Strait of Hormuz.”

At roughly the same time, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed he would join the delegation heading to China. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also traveled to China, along with more than a dozen senior officials, but Hegseth’s presence is unusual: defence chiefs rarely take part in state visits.

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When the street siren sounded outside Mr. Kofi’s tailoring shop in Ikeja, Lagos, it meant only one thing: the grid was back. His team had been sitting in the dark for most of the day. They had run out of generator fuel. Mr. Kofi joked that NEPA — local shorthand for the long-defunct agency that once ran the national grid — must have known a visitor was coming, and that’s why they “brought back the light.” He has been running his tailoring business for 25 years. His shop sits in Band A, Nigeria’s highest-priority electricity zone, promised 20 hours of power a day under the tariff reform introduced in April 2024. The fuel to bridge the gaps now costs around ₦1,300 per liter — up from a national average of ₦1,034 in January, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics.

The proximate cause of the latest spike is a war being fought thousands of kilometres away. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz in late February sent global crude prices surging. Between April 27 and April 29 alone, Brent crude rose from $105 to $118 per barrel — prompting the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to adjust its petrol loading price from ₦1,200 to ₦1,275 per liter. Pump prices at filling stations across the country followed swiftly. But for most Nigerians the current crisis is less a new emergency than a fresh layer on top of a very old one.

Nigeria extracts approximately 1.4 million barrels of crude oil per day and is Africa’s largest petroleum producer. Yet for decades it has lacked the refining capacity to meet its own fuel needs, importing refined petrol priced against global markets. “Why is the fuel expensive here if we are the ones supplying oil to other countries?” asked Vanessa Aguda, a cosmetic chemist and personal care brand founder based in Lagos. “Those are the little questions I keep asking. It’s not aligning properly for us.”

We’ve been sitting here working in the heat and without light all day

Kofi, owner of a tailoring shop in Lagos

The explanation lies in decades of refinery neglect. Nigeria’s four state-owned refineries — in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna — have operated far below capacity for years, crippled by underinvestment and mismanagement. For most of the past decade, the country processed virtually none of its own crude, exporting it raw and importing refined petrol at international prices — a cycle that left consumers exposed to every fluctuation in global oil markets. The long-awaited Dangote refinery, which began petrol production in 2024 and has ramped up significantly since, was supposed to break this dependency. But while it has increased domestic supply, its pricing remains anchored to global crude benchmarks. “Nigerian authorities, since the liberalization policy came on board, have adopted global pricing,” explained Paul Alaje, an independent economist based between Lagos and Abuja. “So whatever the global oil trade is, the price Nigerians pay — even in naira — is still set at the global rate.”

The dysfunction isn’t limited to gas pumps. For years, Nigeria had subsidized electricity at a huge cost. The International Monetary Fund estimated in May 2024 that combined fuel and electricity subsidies were on track to consume 3% of the country’s GDP that year, describing them as “costly and mistargeted, with higher-income groups benefiting more than the most vulnerable.” The new system created five customer tiers: Band A customers are entitled to a minimum of 20 hours per day; Band B, a minimum of 16; Band C, 12; Band D, eight; and Band E, just four. Those who pay more receive more.

Band electricity

In practice, the grid has not cooperated. Uzoma Okey-Ibiam, a civil servant in Abuja, was classified as Band B in her previous neighbourhood of Gaduwa and was supposed to receive at least 16 hours a day. In reality, it was about 12 on average. In Ibadan, Kelvin Oritsetimeyin, a freelance software engineer also in Band B, described having had roughly an hour of grid electricity across an entire two-week period in April. “We could be in Band Z for all I know. It’s terrible,” he joked. “Today is an exception where we’ve had six hours of light. We’ve not had this much in three months.”

Nigerian authorities, since the liberalization policy came on board, have adopted global pricing

Paul Alaje, economist

Even those averages obscure the reality of supply, which rarely arrives in continuous blocks. Power often comes in bursts — an hour on, several hours off, sometimes minutes at a time. “The power can go on and off about 20 times in a week,” Oritsetimeyin said. In Lagos, Aguda said that the only electricity she’d gotten that day came at about 3 a.m. and “lasted for no more than 15 minutes.”

These experiences reflect a broader pattern. The average grid-connected Nigerian household receives only 6.6 hours of supply on a typical day and consumes just 144 kilowatt hours of electricity per year — compared to 351 in Ghana and 4,198 in South Africa. The problem, analysts say, is not simply uneven distribution but a system that often fails altogether. “When the national grid collapses, both Band A and Band D are in zero output,” said Alaje. “It really does not matter anymore because power cannot be transmitted.”

The Nigeria that has emerged from decades of this failure is one that has privatized its own power infrastructure, household by household. Aguda runs her home on solar but her cosmetics manufacturing business on a generator costing around ₦150,000 a month in fuel, on top of ₦48,000 to ₦50,000 in grid electricity charges. “Everything comes up to 200 and something thousand naira every month on electricity alone,” she said. “For a small business here, that expense is quite high.”

When costs force price increases, the competitive consequences are immediate. “When we increase the price of our products, our competitors tend to get more clients. People who were our expected customers move over, because it’s cheaper.” She has watched other manufacturers in her sector go to China or South Korea to produce goods and import them back — not because Nigerian craftsmanship is inferior, but because keeping the lights on in a Nigerian factory makes local production cost-prohibitive. Aguda has considered following suit, but for now is committed to producing locally in line with her brand ethos. “We want to make sure that we are aiming for Nigerian-manufactured products for people of color”, she explained.

For smaller businesses, the margin is thinner still. Tailors, hairdressers and other micro-enterprises operate on narrow daily income, with little buffer when costs rise. “We’ve been sitting here working in the heat and without light all day,” said Mr Kofi on the latest power cut. “I have a generator, but it’s empty. At ₦1,300 a liter, I can’t afford to run it right now.” Economists describe this as a shutdown point — the moment when the cost of operating exceeds what a business can earn. “When small businesses cannot cover their average variable costs, they will have to shut down if those costs continue to grow and revenue is not growing with it,” said Alaje. Mr. Kofi, in Band A, is already past that point on some days.

For those with capital, solar power has become the rational exit. In February, Oritsetimeyin bought a ₦400,000 portable solar station that can run his household of three for 10 hours a day. He subsequently ditched his fuel-guzzling generator, which needed 12-20 litres of petrol per week to run for about four hours a day during work hours.

Meanwhile, Okey-Ibiam spent around ₦5 million on a full inverter system and has been living entirely off-grid since moving to Lugbe in September 2025. “Solar is supposed to be an alternative for the grid. But no, the grid is going to be an alternative for my solar,” she said. “Since I installed it, I don’t think about light anymore,” Uzoma said.

But this stability comes at a cost few can afford. “Minimum wage in Nigeria is about 35 pounds a month,” Alaje said. “How do you think people living on one pound a day can afford to buy solar panels?”

Alaje has been urging the government since February to cap domestic prices at pre-war levels. “If this is done, the impact of global shocks, whether now or in the near future, will be very minimal on our economy.” The government has not acted.

For Aguda, the waiting has a limit. “If by next year nothing gets better, we’ll start looking at moving manufacturing to China or Korea. And as a resident of this country, if things do not get better on time, I will really start thinking of relocating.” She paused. “That would mean starting afresh, starting life a new way, doing something I have never done before.”

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Eileen Wang, the now-former mayor of Arcadia, a city in the Los Angeles area, has resigned from office after federal prosecutors revealed that she agreed to plead guilty to acting illegally as an agent of the Chinese government within the United States. Her departure from the mayor’s office comes shortly before a planned summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The Department of Justice reported Monday that Wang, 58, operated a website called U.S. News Center between late 2020 and 2022, which was presented as a media outlet aimed at the local Chinese-American community. According to prosecutors, the site disseminated content favorable to the government of the People’s Republic of China and responded directly to instructions from Chinese officials.

The investigation alleges that Wang worked alongside Yaoning “Mike” Sun, a California resident who pleaded guilty in 2025 to acting as a foreign agent and is currently serving a four-year prison sentence.

According to the court agreement, Wang admitted that she never notified the U.S. Attorney General that she was acting on behalf of the Chinese government, as required by federal law. The documents also note that she and Sun “received and executed directives from PRC government officials to post pro-PRC content on the website, and sometimes sought approval from PRC government officials to circulate other pro-PRC content.”

One of the incidents cited by the prosecution occurred in November 2021, when Wang was seeking to publish an article related to China and Russia. According to the case file, the then-official wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send.”

Authorities also noted that Wang helped republish an essay written by Chinese officials that denied allegations of genocide against the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region, one of the most sensitive issues in relations between China and the West.

The case sparked strong reactions within the U.S. government. John A. Eisenberg, the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, wrote in a statement: “Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent.”

He added that “it is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from PRC government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.”

For his part, Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, stated: “By her own admission, Eileen Wang secretly served the interests of the Chinese government.”

Wang was elected mayor of Arcadia in 2022. The city, located about 21 kilometers northeast of downtown Los Angeles, has a significant Asian-American population; nearly 59% of its residents identify as Asian, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. After the charges were made public, City Hall confirmed Wang’s immediate resignation and announced that the City Council will soon elect a new mayor.

The former official’s defense team insisted that the activities under investigation were not related to her public duties. Her attorneys, Brian A. Sun and Jason Liang, asserted that the case pertains exclusively to “her personal life,” specifically to the digital platform she operated alongside a person “she believed to be her fiancé.”

The charge of acting as an unregistered foreign agent carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, although the plea agreement could reduce the final sentence. A federal judge will determine the final punishment in the coming weeks.

The case threatens to further fuel mistrust between the two countries and reinforce Washington’s concerns about potential political influence operations orchestrated by Beijing within U.S. territory, ahead of the meeting between Trump and Jinping.