Pakistan, May 16 -- US President Donald Trump's visit to Beijing should be read against the long deterioration of US-China trust rather than the ceremonial warmth with which it was wrapped. The images from Zhongnanhai were generous, even intimate by the standards of Chinese statecraft, but the substance was harder.

Trump had arrived with an overloaded brief of aircraft orders, rare-earth relief, fentanyl cooperation, tariff management and Chinese help in breaking the Iran impasse. However, President Xi Jinping offered courtesy and a conditional formula for stabilising ties. Taiwan, technology and strategic autonomy remained where Beijing has kept them for years: outside the zone of easy compromise.

That is why the post-visit balance she...