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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The far-right candidate is navigating treacherous ground to reach the second round of the Colombian presidential election. Abelardo de la Espriella, who is vying for second place in the polls with Uribista candidate Paloma Valencia, gave two interviews — one on radio and one on television — that have dominated the debate due to his misogynistic remarks. On the radio program Piso 8, he claimed that he gained many female votes because of the size of his genitals and asked the reporter present to zoom in on a photo that highlighted them. On television, he called a veteran journalist ignorant when she asked him about a comment the criminal lawyer had made years earlier: “Ethics has nothing to do with the law.” Journalists and politicians came out in defense of women and criticized the lawyer, making sexism a central issue in the electoral arena. This presents an opportunity for Valencia to gain ground, but De la Espriella also has a path to maintain his lead in the polls.

The electoral opportunity was first recognized by Juan Daniel Oviedo, Valencia’s vice-presidential running mate, who shared a video of De La Espriella’s radio program appearance on social media. “To say that he won the female vote ‘because of how big he is’ only speaks to his own small-mindedness,” he wrote. The far-right candidate’s misstep resonated particularly with Ovideo, an economist, who had been the target of homophobic comments from De La Espriella just days after the presidential primary in which Oviedo faced Valencia and other right-wing candidates. Rather than damaging his campaign, these comments ended up giving the former Bogotá councilman more visibility: he garnered the second-highest number of votes, second only to Valencia, and thus became her running mate for president.

But Oviedo capitalized at that moment on votes from the political center, which his running mate, Valencia, now faces the difficult challenge of winning over without losing the support of her traditional base on the established right. That’s why, when the senator speaks about gender, she always does so from a conservative perspective: she doesn’t consider abortion a right, she says feminism is left-wing, and she talks about defending children who are adopted by diverse families (like that of her vice-presidential candidate).

This Tuesday, Valencia also saw an electoral opportunity and rejected the comments of her right-wing opponent. But she did so discreetly, without mentioning his name or speaking of sexism. Instead, she suggested an apology. “Women journalists shouldn’t have to put up with sexual jokes, offensive insinuations, or personal attacks for daring to ask questions,” she said on her social media, adding: “Whoever is wrong in their treatment of women should acknowledge it and apologize.” A middle ground in which she points out her opponent’s obvious sexism without calling him a misogynist. A stark contrast to the reaction of the left-wing candidate, Iván Cepeda: “We must defeat the patriarchy in Colombian society.”

However, those surrounding Valencia on the campaign trail were less discreet. “Sexist attitudes cannot continue to be normalized or disguised as humor, nonsense, or vulgarity. That is neither charisma nor authenticity. It is a lack of respect,” said former senator David Luna, who is campaigning for Valencia.

Although the Uribista candidate has much to gain if De la Espriella’s comments backfire, she could also lose a great deal if the far-right campaign portrays her as the “woke” candidate, the one who espouses political correctness. This is demonstrated by the reaction of Senator-elect and influencer Alejandro Bermeo, who is close to De la Espriella’s campaign communications team and a member of the party that endorsed him, National Salvation. “The establishment, with the direct backing of Paloma Valencia, is fabricating a #MeToo movement against Abelardo de la Espriella,” he said on social media. “Like desperate ‘progressives,’ they’re using gender issues as a weapon to eliminate anyone who doesn’t belong to the ‘yes we can’ club of watered-down progressivism,” he added.

Valencia’s campaign has already struggled to attract a segment of the right-wing electorate, who are drawn to De la Espreilla not only for his “outsider” rhetoric but also because they perceive him as “stronger.” “I have the balls to do what Colombia needs done,” the candidate declared at an event in Bogotá last week, in another instance where he elected to allude to his genitals to emphasize his gender. He has also stated that he does fight against violence against women, having represented, as a lawyer, the family of Rosa Elvira Cely, a woman brutally raped and murdered in Bogotá in 2012, and Natalia Ponce de León, a woman attacked with acid by her partner in 2014.

What remains to be seen is whether a sexist incident will deflate a candidacy or simply prove ineffective among right-wing voters. Engineer Rodolfo Hernández, who ran against Petro four years ago as an outsider to the political establishment and a right-wing candidate, was hit hard by a video published by journalist Daniel Coronell two days before the election, in which he appears on a yacht in Miami dancing with several women in swimsuits. The former mayor of Bucaramanga had also previously stated that “ideally, women should dedicate themselves to raising children,” but that comment did not prevent him from advancing to the second round.

Another example of this lack of impact was provided by Donald Trump in 2016, when he was the Republican candidate. A month before the election, an audio recording surfaced in which the businessman spoke about grabbing women’s genitals whenever he felt like it: “When you’re a star, they let you do anything to them.” Despite the scandal the audio generated, he defeated Hillary Clinton, who represented “old politics” for a large part of the electorate. The anti-establishment vote can carry more weight than the rejection of sexism.

That has been precisely De La Espriella’s strategy. His AI-generated videos repeatedly claim that Valencia represents “the usual suspects,” a term that includes not only traditional Uribismo but also the senator’s old political rivals: former president Juan Manuel Santos, presidential candidate Claudia López, and Interior Minister Armando Benedetti. None of the three are even remotely involved in the Uribista campaign, but the far-right candidate’s campaign has sought to establish this narrative. Valencia has defended herself by arguing that she is “one of the usual suspects,” but in the sense that she has always worked for Colombia, while he has lived abroad for many years. This second narrative has not been as successful.

Valencia and De La Espriella know that any misstep between now and May 31 will determine who wins among right-wing voters and advances to a virtually certain runoff against left-wing Senator Cepeda. They also know that sexism played a role in the campaign, but it’s still unclear whether it worked in favor of or against the candidate who boasted about his genitals to a reporter.

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The political pressure exerted by the United States on the International Criminal Court (ICC), through sanctions imposed on eight of its judges and three prosecutors, as well as on the entities and NGOs that collaborate with them, is testing its very resilience. All individuals involved are carrying on with their work, even though the degree of interference from Washington goes so far as to prevent them from even using a credit card. For a court like this one, without its own police force, the only way to defend itself is through its legitimacy and the support of other countries.

Therefore, President Donald Trump’s offensive in connection with investigations related to Israel and Afghanistan has also revealed the degree of courage and resistance that democratic governments, which declare themselves defenders of justice, are willing to display. These are the same governments that, 24 years ago, established the ICC to try the suspects of the worst crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression.

Throughout its history, the court has not been without its critics, as Reed Brody, an American lawyer specializing in war crimes, explains by phone: “The only defendants ever convicted of international crimes by the ICC in its 24 years of existence have been African rebels,” he states. Things, he acknowledges, have changed with the arrest warrants issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, over the war in Gaza. “For the first time, an international tribunal has indicted the leader of a Western-allied state.”

“Since the Nuremberg trials [against Nazi leaders], only defeated enemies, outcasts, or adversaries of the West had been tried,” Brody points out. Hence, President Trump “has decided to restrict the lives of jurists and other supporters of international justice, without so far there having been a united response from the other countries that are members of the ICC.” For this lawyer, “Trump is trying to destroy international institutions, including the United Nations, in that case with the Board of Peace he created [for Gaza].”

Opened in 2002, the ICC is governed by the Rome Statute, to which 125 states are party. During its early years, it was criticized for focusing too heavily on Africa. In its first completed case, the ICC sentenced Thomas Lubanga to 14 years in prison in July 2012 for the war crime of forcing children to fight. He was a former Congolese warlord who recruited them between 2002 and 2003, and it was a landmark case. In 2021, a 25-year sentence was handed down to one of those former child soldiers: Dominic Ongwen of Uganda, who was one of the commanders of the extremist Christian organization Lord’s Liberation Army.

Currently, the tribunal is also investigating international crimes in Georgia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Philippines, Venezuela, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Palestine, and Afghanistan. These last two cases are the ones that triggered the sanctions.

Major powers such as the U.S., China, Russia, India and Israel, are not parties to the ICC, but their nationals can be tried if they committed a crime on the territory of a member country. Trump rejects this possibility for troops deployed in Afghanistan. Furthermore, he considers the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant an intrusion against an ally.

The ICC has also requested the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. And it is preparing to try former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte for the deaths of at least 78 people in anti-drug campaigns that resulted in the deaths of thousands in his country. Despite the tensions, the court, based in The Hague, continues its work.

Larissa van den Herik, a professor of international law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, believes that the current challenge “is representative of a broader crisis of the international legal order.” In her opinion, “this order cannot be invoked sometimes and not others depending on political interests.” In this context, the ICC “is the most intrusive international organization, because its targets are state leaders.” “It was inevitable that there would be a lot of resistance from the beginning,” the professor explains.

The restrictions imposed by the United States extend to Palestinian NGOs that contribute to the work of the ICC, “and they are out of the spotlight even though they are affected even more heavily and have repercussions for the victims, and that is unprecedented,” says Van den Herik. She believes that “private entities, such as banks, should support the rule of law, on which the economy, investments, and financial structures also depend,” and that this would alleviate the burden imposed on the targets of sanctions. And while she admits that it is “a critical moment for the court,” she warns against judging its success or failure “in the short term.”

Ligeia Quackelbeen, an expert in international criminal law at Tilburg University, argues that the ICC’s recent activity underscores both its vulnerability and its strength. “It is vulnerable because it lacks a police apparatus and depends on the cooperation of states,” she explains. “The Italian handling of the arrest warrant for Osama Almasri [a Libyan general wanted by the ICC for war crimes] shows how problematic that dependence can be,” she notes. Italy arrested him and then let him escape, and an investigation revealed that Justice Minister Carlo Nordio lied to Parliament.

Despite this, Quackelbeen emphasizes that what happened does not render the arrest warrants irrelevant. “Even if those issued against Putin or Netanyahu are not executed immediately, they still restrict their ability to travel and act in the political and diplomatic spheres,” she asserts. “That effect is not merely symbolic.”

The same expert adds that “going after the biggest criminals is essential,” and believes that the trial against Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity “will set the course for the ICC in the coming years.” She also offers this further reflection: “The court has been redefining its role within the global justice system, and is increasingly supporting national courts in their efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of international crimes.” For the ICC, immunity does not apply to a head of state or prime minister when they have committed the most heinous crimes. Therefore, it only intervenes when a country is unable or unwilling to administer justice.

Van den Herik emphasizes that the weight of the sanctions should prompt reflection, “because the concept of justice, and also the equality of states, as well as the checks and balances of power, are under pressure.” Hence, she believes it is necessary to remember that we must choose between “perhaps protecting an ally or ensuring accountability.” Brody, for his part, believes that states cannot act as if they only believe in the court’s efforts when they like what it does. And Quackelbeen argues that, in a way, “being criticized is in the court’s DNA.” But when there are “courageous states,” the ICC has an effect.

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