India, May 16 -- In April 2025, US President Donald Trump fired the first shots in his trade war against China (and the rest of the world). Some countries quickly capitulated, but the Chinese dug in their heels, and responded in kind. Eventually, the two countries seemed to arrive at some sort of detente - one that was subsequently rendered irrelevant by a US court ruling on Trump's Liberation Day tariffs. A little over a year later, the main focus of Trump's two-day visit to China, his first since 2017, was less about confrontation and more about boosting business ties between the two countries. After all, efforts by the first Trump Presidency, the Biden administration, and the tariffs-led trade war of 2025 have not dented China's standing as the world's manufacturing hub, including for hi-tech products, with the curbs on the sale of high-end AI chips pushing Beijing to emphasise self-reliance (so much so that reports now suggest that China is saying no to these chips). It isn't clear what else the summit achieved in terms of business; Trump said China has promised to buy 200 Boeing planes; Beijing was silent on this, although a Chinese spokesperson said that the trade ties were "mutually beneficial". Each side selected what mattered to them in their readouts, but both sides have also tried to play up the outcomes in positive terms. The world would have been watching the summit closely to see whether Trump could convince President Xi Jinping to sign on to a plan to open up the Strait of Hormuz and end the conflict in West Asia, but there appears to have been little movement on this front. Beijing remains an ally of Teheran and, while it hasn't endorsed Iran's actions since the February 28 attack by the US and Israel, it hasn't condemned them either. Trump claims the two sides agreed that Iran should "never have" a nuclear weapon, but Beijing has again been silent on this. Xi described the two-day visit as a "historic" and "symbolic" milestone, and Beijing's statement spoke of the two countries arriving at a "new positioning" in bilateral ties. Xi has proposed a vision of "constructive strategic stability" to guide the relationship. The sum total of this phrase is that the US and China can peacefully coexist through cooperation, healthy competition, and manageable differences, helping each other succeed. This is the broad context in which Xi brought up Thucydides Trap, an American political scientist's coinage regarding geopolitical conflicts, to suggest that an established power and an emerging power need not be in conflict, although he was unambiguous as far as Taiwan was concerned, warning the US not to cross redlines. Taiwan, in Beijing's view, remains "the most important" issue in China-US relations and mishandling it would lead to "clashes and even conflicts". In effect, while high on pageantry and pomp, the visit has not, based on the information available so far, resulted in a "big deal". What it has achieved, though, is to tell the world that the world's two most powerful countries (and two most powerful men) are talking, and open to more talking....