New Delhi, Sept. 29 -- Last week's summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Washington underscored the increasingly transactional character of US-China relations. For Xi, the visit to the White House, the first in more than a decade, carried considerable symbolic weight.

The choreographed optics, from reviewing founding documents at the US National Archives to a traditional tea ceremony, were designed to signal continuity and historical depth even as the underlying relationship is defined by strategic distrust.

The central message was, therefore, less about reconciliation than managing rivalry. Washington and Beijing showed that they are capable of compartmentalizing their differences, even as t...