China Diplomacy Has Failed; Trump Should End Dialogue if the Xi Summit Yields No Progress
Source: "Trump should use Xi's weakness to reset America's China strategy now | Fox News." September 22, 2026. www.foxnews.com
The Gist
The author argues that talking to China for 50+ years hasn't worked and may have even made things worse, since China's bad behavior (fentanyl, spying, helping Iran kill U.S. troops) has only escalated. With Xi arriving at this week's summit weakened by internal purges and economic problems, the author says this is Trump's last chance to get real results—and if the talks fail again, the U.S. should stop negotiating and try something more forceful instead.
Conclusion
If this week's summit fails to produce meaningful progress, the United States should abandon decades of dialogue-based diplomacy with China and instead pursue more forceful, effective measures.
Premises
- Decades of U.S.-China dialogue, dating back to Nixon's 1972 outreach, have coincided with—and likely caused—a steady deterioration in Chinese behavior rather than improvement.
- China exploits periods of diplomatic 'stability' to continue harmful conduct: selling fentanyl, stealing U.S. intellectual property, predatory trade practices, supporting Russia's war in Ukraine, operating secret police stations on U.S. soil, and enabling Iran to kill American service members via satellite targeting data.
- The May 2026 Trump-Xi summit produced little discernible progress on contentious issues, and Xi displayed open arrogance and insults toward the U.S. (e.g., invoking the Thucydides Trap and 'new era' rhetoric).
- Xi Jinping now arrives at the September summit as a significantly weakened leader—facing purges of top generals, economic troubles, health questions, and a failed BRICS summit—giving the U.S. unusual leverage.
- Despite this weakness, Xi's diminished domestic position may actually push him toward manufacturing conflict with the West as a distraction, making constructive dialogue this week unlikely.
- Given this pattern of failed diplomacy plus current leverage, continuing the same dialogue-centric approach without results would squander a strategic opportunity.
Assumptions
- Diplomatic engagement itself, rather than China's internal strategic calculations or external incentives, is a primary cause of China's bad behavior.
- A 'diminished' or weakened Xi is more exploitable via pressure tactics than through continued negotiation, rather than being more dangerous or unpredictable.
- Ending dialogue and pursuing unspecified 'effective' alternatives would yield better outcomes than continued diplomatic engagement.
- The correlation between decades of dialogue and worsening Chinese conduct implies causation.
- The U.S. has viable non-dialogue policy tools ready to deploy that would be more effective than talking.