{"id":669010,"date":"2026-05-13T21:23:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/669010\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T21:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T21:23:17","slug":"trump-xi-summit-why-a-g2-meeting-poses-a-major-risk-for-australia-and-its-allies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/669010\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump-Xi summit: Why a \u201cG2\u201d meeting poses a major risk for Australia and its allies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Washington: The last time Donald Trump met Xi Jinping \u2013 in South Korea in October \u2013 he referred to the encounter as a \u201cG2 meeting\u201d. That language didn\u2019t go unnoticed, and hasn\u2019t been forgotten.<\/p>\n

Some foreign policy analysts \u2013 who pay a lot more attention to words than the US president, it must be said \u2013 often ascribe to Trump a sphere-of-influence philosophy on geopolitics. By that, they mean that he sees the world as being dominated by great powers (and strong men) who have the right to control their region.<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump and Xi Jinping shake hands after their talks in South Korea in October last year.Getty<\/p>\n

No more so than the US and China \u2013 the world\u2019s two largest economies, and the two great geostrategic rivals of our time. Any meeting of their two leaders<\/a> is therefore consequential for the world at large.<\/p>\n

For middle powers such as Australia, a \u201cG2\u201d world where the important decisions are made in Washington and Beijing would be disadvantageous. Canberra benefits from a stable relationship between the US and China, but still wants a seat at the table.<\/p>\n

Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat turned geopolitical risk consultant, wrote in the Foreign Affairs journal recently that US allies had little trust that Trump would remember or represent their interests when sitting across the table from Xi in Beijing.<\/p>\n

He noted they were also hedging their bets by shoring up their own relations with China \u2013 hence the steady stream of leaders visiting Xi in recent months, including Canada\u2019s Mark Carney, France\u2019s Emmanuel Macron, Britain\u2019s Keir Starmer \u2013 and, before all of them, Australia\u2019s Anthony Albanese<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump was welcomed at the airport in Beijing by China\u2019s Executive Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu.Getty Images<\/p>\n

They are also forming stronger links with each other. No leader made this clearer than Carney, who earlier this year spoke about a \u201crupture\u201d in the world order<\/a> and the need for middle powers to forge a new path.<\/p>\n

Like the rest of the world, Australia\u2019s immediate interest in the Trump-Xi meeting is ending the conflict in the Middle East<\/a> and reopening the Strait of Hormuz \u2013 an outcome in which the US and China are also invested.<\/p>\n

Beyond that, says Kovrig, \u201cAustralia would like a stabilising agreement of some kind \u2013 not a grand bargain, but to see that the outcomes are broadly stabilising in the short term\u201d.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

The risk is that Trump \u2013 in his dealmaking fervour and rush for a foreign policy win \u2013 will make concessions that leave middle powers exposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big danger for Australia [and others] is some kind of Xi-Trump deal over their heads that leaves them with more hawkish policies on China than the US apparently has now,\u201d Kovrig tells this masthead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s partly why I\u2019ve been watching a number of other middle powers really downplaying any criticism [of China], just in case they end up on the wrong side of Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to be more critical of China than the US, because the smaller countries want to be able to hide behind the US on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kovrig was detained by China for nearly three years<\/a>, beginning in December 2018, along with fellow Canadian Michael Spavor, in what was widely considered a retaliatory act for Canada\u2019s arrest of Meng Wanzhou<\/a>, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei.<\/p>\n

\"MichaelMichael Kovrig (right) and Michael Spavor were recognised at Canada\u2019s parliament in Ottawa in front of then US president Joe Biden.AP<\/p>\n

Meng was detained on a provisional US extradition request. The charges against her were ultimately dropped, and she was released in September 2021 \u2013 Kovrig and Spavor were freed hours later.<\/p>\n

Kovrig notes Australia\u2019s strategic model rests on a security alliance with the US \u2013 through the ANZUS treaty, defence co-operation and now AUKUS \u2013 while having China as its clear largest trading partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an inherent contradiction similar to South-East Asian countries that is always challenging for the government to manage,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia is trying to reduce its dependence on both, just as many other countries are. But that\u2019s a long-term project, that\u2019s a generational project.<\/p>\n

\"PrimePrime Minister Anthony Albanese meets with China’s President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China.AP<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the short term, what Australia and other countries want is to be able to temporise. They want breathing space. They would like no major problems while they keep working on getting their own houses in order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kovrig says that in some ways, the worst outcome for Australia would not be a failed summit, but an optically successful one that leads to ambiguity and uncertainty. In that case, Trump would claim to have struck a great deal, and Xi would declare the US had respected China\u2019s core interests.<\/p>\n

That sounds like exactly the sort of outcome a Trump-Xi meeting might deliver.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"China<\/a><\/p>\n

The problem there, Kovrig says, is that Australia and other US allies will be unsure of what Trump has actually promised. After the summit, Beijing is likely to test the ambiguity by pushing harder on Taiwan and the South China Sea, or on economic coercion, \u201cto see if the US does anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way the Chinese Communist Party works, it\u2019s a Leninist organisation. It will try to take as much as it can until somebody stops it,\u201d says Kovrig.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they think they can buy Trump off with some soybean deals, what you\u2019ll see after the summit is they\u2019ll continue salami slicing. They\u2019ll keep trying to take more.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Australia, that will manifest in trying to take more in Australia\u2019s neighbourhood \u2013 further constraining Australia, further expanding Chinese influence in the Pacific Islands and South-East Asia, more assertive military manoeuvres in Australia\u2019s immediate area, more use of coercion.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, [Beijing] could conclude that the US is not going to help Australia as much as it was before, and they can push harder. That\u2019s the outcome Australia\u2019s security community would be worried about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what\u2019s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"MichaelMichael Koziol<\/a> is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-669010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}