With China’s leader Xi Jinping wrapping his three-day visit with President Donald Trump in the U.S. on Friday, the question is what was achieved and what did each side want to get out of the bilateral summit?
To answer the former, the answer is not much, beyond extending the U.S.-China trade truce—previously scheduled to expire Nov. 10—by two months to January 2027. What each side wanted is a more complex question—and one I put to Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has spent decades working in China.