Both U.S. and Chinese officials tout President Donald Trump’s two-day visit to Beijing last week as a masterclass in pageantry and transactional diplomacy. Smiles were exchanged, lucrative trade deals were verbally committed to, and a fragile consensus was reached on stabilizing bilateral ties and managing global flashpoints such as the Iran crisis.
Yet, beneath the diplomatic veneer, the entire architecture of the U.S.-China relationship remains precarious. Beijing has quietly but firmly hinged all these newfound diplomatic gains and trade results on a single, nonnegotiable issue: Taiwan.
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