Exclusive | Pei Minxin: Beijing Won Nothing Lasting from the Trump–Xi Summit

In the volatile theater of major-power politics, the international community has spent the days following last week's high-stakes Trump–Xi summit in Beijing dissecting every diplomatic ripple. Observers have scrambled to parse whether Washington is compromising its commitments or if Beijing has successfully altered the cross-strait status quo.

According to Professor Pei Minxin of Claremont McKenna College—one of the world's foremost authorities on Chinese governance—the global audience is watching the wrong script.

Sitting down with The Storm Media for an exclusive interview in Taipei on May 26. Pei offered an unflinching, realist appraisal of the summit's fallout. While frequent, "low-substance" summits serve a tactical purpose in preventing the U.S.–China rivalry from spiraling out of control, they do not shift the deep structural friction between the two powers. For Taiwan, his message is direct: parsing Donald Trump's shifting rhetoric is an exercise in futility. The real anchors of security lie in long-term U.S. institutional support and the physical realities that shape Beijing's restraint.

Dismantling the Illusion of Beijing's "Diplomatic Wins"

Initial post-summit commentary suggested that Chinese Leader Xi Jinping extracted immediate, concrete concessions from Washington, notably pointing to intense pressure surrounding Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te's recent transit stop and a rumored delay in a U.S. arms defense package. Pei thoroughly dismisses the notion that these constitute enduring strategic victories for China.

On President Lai's transit, Pei views the episode as a clear diplomatic failure for Beijing.

"China's unsuccessful attempt—President Lai ultimately made it," Pei observes. "Beijing's goal was a public humiliation designed to signal Taiwan's isolation. It did not succeed."

Regarding the rumored delay of Taiwan's arms package, Pei urges the public to separate short-term optics from long-term defense logistics. While a critical February phone call between Trump and Xi likely resulted in a temporary pause, Trump's calculations are driven by immediate diplomatic sequencing rather than a shift in core policy. With Xi scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C. for an official visit on September 24, Trump has zero incentive to greenlight defense sales that would jeopardize his own summit.

"It is highly unlikely that Trump would approve arms sales before the visit," Pei judges. By appearing to push the timeline, Xi buys roughly four months of time to protect his domestic "face" ahead of his Washington trip.

Yet, Pei emphasizes that a four-to-six-month delay is "mostly symbolic" in a real military sense. Because signed defense contracts typically require five to eight years to translate into physical hardware deliveries, Taiwan's security does not hinge on a temporary pause. Instead, its true defense relies on sustained U.S. congressional trust and institutional military posture, both of which remain unshakeable.

A defining pillar of Pei's decades of scholarship is that China's current governance model is not an overnight invention, but a deliberate reactivation of the Leninist institutional skeleton preserved by Deng Xiaoping. While Deng utilized this framework to unleash market reforms, Xi has filled it with personalistic authority and pervasive internal control.

Does negotiating with a system that structurally cannot compromise render summit diplomacy useless? Not externally, Pei argues.

Totalitarianism grants Xi complete domestic freedom of action and total absence of opposition. However, on the geopolitical stage, China remains strictly disciplined by the balance of power. "As long as China faces much stronger competitors... China will have to take that into account," Pei notes. Today's Beijing is animated far more by hard power politics than by rigid Marxist ideological conviction, rendering it entirely capable of tactical pragmatism when facing stronger adversaries.

Why War Across the Strait is Not Imminent

Analysts who predict that Xi's pursuit of a fourth term will make him more risk-tolerant on Taiwan—arguing that he needs a historic legacy achievement—are, in Pei's reading, misreading the operational reality.

An actual campaign to conquer Taiwan through military force would require an unmistakable, total state mobilization. "If you want to prepare for a big war, which might involve the U.S., then you have to be very serious," Pei explains. "You will see all kinds of preparations... stockpiling of food, stockpiling of a lot of oil, and you will see civil defense."

Currently, none of these systemic, large-scale indicators are visible. Beijing is systematically securitizing its economy against external shocks, but its strategy remains firmly fixed on achieving unification through means short of war.

Pei also challenges a popular contemporary theory: that Taiwan's semiconductor dominance functions as a "silicon shield" protecting it from invasion. While an attack would cause catastrophic global economic devastation, China's accelerating domestic self-reliance in lower-end, legacy chips blunts the direct military deterrence of Taiwan's high-end tech.

Furthermore, Pei points out that U.S. strategic interest in Taiwan transcends technology. "Even without a shield, the U.S. might intervene, because Taiwan has other importance than having the world's best semiconductor sector," he states. Ultimately, the true check on Beijing remains old-fashioned deterrence: Taiwan's formidable geography, its inherent military capabilities, and implicit American backing.

"Taiwan is a tough nut to crack," Pei remarks. "The Communist Party will have to think many, many times."

The Limits of the AI Surveillance State

In his landmark book The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China, Pei argued that China's dictatorship is sustained by a labor-intensive, human-managed Leninist apparatus rather than technology alone. Speaking in Taipei, Pei maintains that this thesis remains robust despite the rapid integration of artificial intelligence and big data.

While the modern Chinese security apparatus utilizes facial recognition and digital triangulation with formidable efficiency—far outstripping the analytical capabilities of the Cold War-era KGB or Stasi—technology is not infallible. Significant gaps remain. A political dissident who strictly uses cash and completely avoids mobile devices can bypass digital networks entirely.

During hyper-sensitive political events, such as the annual "Two Sessions" (兩會) in Beijing, the state does not sit back and rely on passive algorithms. Instead, security is dialed up through traditional, labor-intensive means. "They actually have to rely on human beings," Pei says. "They have to knock on doors of those people on the blacklist." Technology serves to amplify the efficiency of the Leninist human apparatus; it does not replace it.

Reflecting on three decades of analyzing Chinese political development, Pei looks back at the foundational premises of Western engagement with a sense of bittersweet validation. He notes that Western integration policies were built on three fundamentally flawed assumptions:

The first was a growth miscalculation: the assumption that China would not sustain such a rapid economic rise—a trajectory that ultimately caught even Beijing's own leaders by surprise. The second was an assimilation miscalculation: the expectation that China could be socialized into becoming a passive “stakeholder” in the Western-led global order, which overlooked the fact that Chinese leaders had always explicitly intended to exploit the international system for benefit without genuinely absorbing its values. The third was a democratization miscalculation: the linear projection that economic development automatically yields democracy—a theory Pei describes as highly contested among scholars, as the exact causal mechanism has never been established.

Pei warned decades ago that economic development under a monopoly party would simply produce massive corruption, incomplete institutional reforms, and eventual economic stagnation. History has validated those warnings, yet it brings him no joy.

"I'm very proud that I made these two correct calls," Pei reflects. "But at the same time, I think this is sad for the Chinese people because the victims are the Chinese people."

The genuine "China dream," Pei asserts, is not the state's nationalist project—it is the quiet aspiration of ordinary citizens for a free, prosperous, normal, and peaceful country.

The Strategic Bottom Line: Filter Out the Noise

Addressing Taiwan's current polarized domestic political landscape, Pei admits he does not track daily legislative maneuvers, but notes that democratic polarization is a troubling global trend, mirroring the deep divisions within the United States.

For those worried that the upcoming U.S. midterm elections this November will disrupt Washington's cross-strait policy, Pei offers an alternative reading of the American electorate. Domestic issues like gasoline prices and inflation, alongside active foreign crises such as the U.S.–Iran conflict, are what drive American voters. Taiwan policy remains a bipartisan institutional constant rather than a volatile campaign issue.

Pei's parting advice to analysts and policymakers in Taipei is simple: stop obsessing over every word that comes out of the White House.

"Don't over-analyze," Pei cautions, noting that Trump's rhetoric changes constantly, meaning an analysis based on today's statements could be obsolete tomorrow. Instead, Taiwan must watch concrete policy actions, congressional legislation, and institutional military defense commitments.

The U.S.–China relationship is currently being managed through transactional diplomacy, not structurally transformed. As long as external constraints hold, Beijing will remain totalitarian at home and pragmatic abroad. Taiwan's most secure path is to look past transient diplomatic noise, focus heavily on internal social cohesion, and maintain its unshakeable alignment with the deep institutional framework of American power.

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