India, May 18 -- China is well-known for categorising its bilateral relationships. It has an "all-weather strategic cooperative partnership" with Pakistan, announced during Communist Party of China (CPC) general secretary and Chinese President Xi Jinping's State visit in 2015. With India, it has a "strategic cooperative partnership" that was upgraded to "even closer partnership for development" in 2014. The US, however, is not seen as a partner but a country with which China seeks a "constructive relationship of strategic stability" - this is how Xi characterised it during his meeting with American President Donald Trump, who, last week, was on his first State visit to China in his second term. China has called this a "new positioning" for bilateral ties with the US. This is an important formulation. Contrary to what some analysts believe, the fact that China has come up with it suggests not its desire for stability in ties or simply the ability to manage competition with the US but a belief that it has more advantages than the US in their relationship. The new phraseology does not change the fact that China sees the US as posing existential threats. Such threats do not simply disappear whatever the US does but are an inherent part of the worldview of the CPC. China has regularly tried to build a global narrative of equivalence with the US despite the gap in their economic, military and soft power capacities. But in between the two Trump terms, Chinese national power, including its technological and military prowess, has also expanded rapidly. The tariffs of Trump's second term were met with swift Chinese retaliation with massive exports controls on critical raw materials that eventually forced the US into a trade truce in October last year. What is more, China has also sought to diversify trade away from the US as a way of reducing its own dependencies - US-China trade in goods has fallen by more than a third since Trump's State visit to China in 2017. The Chinese government has also been willing to take American export controls on high-end semiconductor chips in its stride as a way of inuring its own industry to the pain. In this, it is also willing to accept home-grown lower-quality chips as a way to push domestic innovation and to motivate local industry to pursue self-reliance. In his welcome banquet for Trump, Xi noted that "over 300 million American people are reinvigorating the spirit of patriotism, innovation and enterprise, and ushering in a new journey for the development of the United States" - perhaps an attempt to flatter his guest - but he also used the opportunity to also reference his own desire to achieve the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". The readout from his "private meeting" with Trump seemed a little sharper in tone with Xi declaring simply, "President Trump wants to make America great again, and I am committed to leading the Chinese people to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation". Xi highlighted in terms that Trump would understand clearly that he had his own project and that he would not let the Americans stand in the way. On Taiwan, Xi "stressed that [it] is the most important issue in China-US relations. If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy." Taiwanese analysts have highlighted this language as being stronger in tone than before, even though US secretary of State Marco Rubio said American policy on Taiwan was unchanged. If Indian or other analysts think that China's repeated military purges - its Central Military Commission is now down to just two members, including Xi - mean the Chinese will be more diffident about picking fights, they should think again. On the economic relationship, both Xi and Premier Li Qiang highlighted the need for "a stable and predictable China-US economic and trade relationship" that in China's view "conforms to the interests of the two countries and the world." But there was little substance that seems to have come out of the meetings. The US claims that China would buy American agricultural products and Boeing planes have not been confirmed by Beijing. In any case, such promises have seldom been met before. Meanwhile, China will continue to "do a good job serving foreign-funded enterprises. and allow [them] to plan for the future with peace of mind and focus on their own development". In other words, China is directly communicating to the American CEOs accompanying Trump and will aim to sustain a separate track with American businesses amidst the uncertainties of a Trump presidency. But even here, the Chinese under Xi are not shy of announcing their willingness to hit where it hurts. Two recent regulations, on the "security of industrial and supply chains" and on "countering foreign improper extraterritorial jurisdiction", arm Chinese authorities with extensive powers to respectively investigate foreign companies on grounds of threatening the security of industrial supply chains and thus, threatening Chinese "national security" and to identify and force non-compliance of foreign laws or sanctions that target China. Trump has described his visit in superlatives which the Chinese have approvingly quoted also in their own statements. Given that Trump and Xi are likely to meet several more times this year on the sidelines of various multilateral forums with talk of even a Xi visit to the US, perhaps the Americans are simply engaged in a holding action until they can get their act together and conclude the Iran conflict....