Trump Can Stare Down a Weak Xi Jinping This Week
When Xi is worried about contact with the outside, it is hard to engage his regime or society. Trump is confronting a brittle China in Beijing this week.
by Gordon G. Chang • May 13, 2026 at 5:00 aM
Xi Jinping's inward-facing actions, however, betray a deep sense of insecurity. Trump can take advantage of it.
China's people — to the regime "building material" — are now extremely unhappy in the Communist Party "engineering state." Gloom, as a result, has descended over Chinese society.
Xi has responded to the unhappiness in society by initiating a censorship campaign against "excessively pessimistic sentiment." Most significantly, he is not willing to implement structural changes to put more money in the pockets of the laobaixing, the common folk.
No wonder China's intellectuals and social media users refer to this moment as their country's "garbage time of history."
Unfortunately, Xi considers the United States an existential threat not because of anything Americans say or do but because of who they are. An insecure ruling organization in Beijing is afraid of the inspirational impact of American values and form of governance on the Chinese people. This means, try as Americans might, their democracy will never have amicable relations with China as long as it is ruled by the Communist Party.
The Washington Post this week reported that Xi Jinping, on the eve of his summit with President Donald Trump, is “confident in China’s power.”
The country, from the outside, looks strong.
Xi’s inward-facing actions, however, betray a deep sense of insecurity. Trump can take advantage of it.
As Yanzhong Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in the New York Times on May 10, Xi has created and reinforced ridiculous narratives of American decline inside the “information cocoon” the Communist Party has created.
For instance, the notion of an “American kill line” - millions of American families are “teetering on a precipice” where they are “one lost job, illness, or unexpected expense away from ruin” - has taken hold in China.