Trump describes his meeting with Xi Jinping at the White House as a "great meeting."

Diplomatic relations between the United States and China, following the recent state visit of Xi Jinping to Washington at the end of September 2026, are going through a phase of managed détente: they have stabilized compared to the most tense moments of the trade war and the pandemic, but remain marked by intense strategic competition and several open conflict areas.

Xi's visit to Washington — the first state visit of a Chinese president to the White House in more than a decade — has a strong symbolic component. According to Demócrata, Donald Trump emphasized that both will continue working “to forge a better future” and the White House itself highlighted the milestone of restoring this highest-level relationship format. The trip culminates a sequence of contacts including the May summit in Beijing, where the two leaders agreed to build a relationship of “strategic stability.”

On the declarative level, Xi has insisted — in words reported by the Xinhua agency and cited by Demócrata — that Washington and Beijing must behave “as partners and not as adversaries” and that the national goals of both countries “do not have to conflict.” Upon arrival at Andrews base, he spoke of strengthening a framework where cooperation is a priority and disagreements can be channeled, and expressed his confidence in maintaining a “deep dialogue” with Trump on bilateral and global issues.

However, this optimistic discourse coexists with a loaded agenda of disputes. At the Washington summit, according to the analysis by Demócrata, the following are addressed:

• Trade and tariffs: both countries maintain a truce in the tariff conflict but continue negotiating trade restrictions and access to rare earths and other strategic raw materials.
• Technology and artificial intelligence: AI has become a central field of competition. Mechanisms to manage risks are explored, but regulatory differences and political models hinder deep cooperation.
• Security and geopolitics: Iran and especially Taiwan are main focal points. Xi has reiterated that Taiwan is Beijing’s “red line” and has warned, in previous summits reported by Demócrata, that mismanagement of this issue could lead to “frictions and even conflicts.”

At the same time, there are concrete signs of economic recomposition. In the agri-food sector, industry media such as Eurocarne and Eurocarne document how, alongside the political relationship, Washington and Beijing have negotiated the reopening of the Chinese market to U.S. beef and the renewal of the registration of hundreds of meat exporting plants, indicating a willingness to “normalize” at least part of the trade ties.

Looking to the medium term, Chinese diplomacy has described the relationship as “stable but with risks.” At the end of August, Foreign Minister Wang Yi recalled — according to Demócrata — that despite the “improvement” in recent months, structural challenges persist and the goal remains a “constructive, strategic, and stable” relationship. This formulation well summarizes the current balance: neither rupture nor alliance, but a competitive coexistence that is attempted to be channeled through periodic summits and high-level dialogue channels.

In summary, after Xi Jinping's visit:

• Political contacts at the highest level have been reopened and normalized, after years of distrust and tariff clashes.
• There is a truce and some stabilization on the economic front, with selective advances (agri-food, raw materials), although controls and suspicions remain in sensitive technological sectors.
• The relationship remains marked by intense strategic competition, especially over Taiwan, the technological race, and security in Asia-Pacific.
• Both capitals strive to present the relationship as manageable and predictable, but the margin for error is small and any crisis in Taiwan, Iran, or other scenarios could reactivate escalation.

Therefore, the current state can be described as a “conditional détente”: pragmatic cooperation where it suits both powers, against a background of systemic rivalry that Xi's visit has helped temper but not resolve.

In the United States constitutional system, the president holds a central but not exclusive role in foreign policy: the Constitution divides several key powers with Congress. Still, in practice, the president is the main architect and executor of U.S. foreign action.

1. Head of State and international representative

The Constitution does not literally use the term “head of state,” but in practice the president is. This implies:

• Officially representing the United States before other states and international organizations.
• Receiving ambassadors and other foreign representatives, which implies formal recognition of governments and states.
• Conducting state visits, bilateral and multilateral summits, and delivering official messages on behalf of the country in international forums.

This symbolic and protocol role combines with real decision-making functions, as these acts send political messages about alliances, priorities, and conflicts.

2. Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces

The Constitution designates the president as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army and Navy. In foreign policy, this translates into:

• Strategic direction of the armed forces in foreign missions, armed conflicts, and military operations.
• Ability to order deployments, troop movements, targeted attacks, and immediate response operations to threats.
• Definition of general military doctrine together with the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

However, the power to formally declare war and to fund military operations belongs to Congress. In practice, many recent conflicts have been initiated by presidential decisions without a traditional declaration of war, relying on prior congressional authorizations or the power to respond to emergencies.

3. Power to make treaties

The president is the central actor in formal diplomacy:

• Negotiates and signs international treaties on behalf of the United States.
• Leads the Department of State and the diplomatic corps, which act under his directives.
• Sets negotiation priorities (trade, security, environmental, arms control, etc.).

However, treaties only gain full domestic force when the Senate ratifies them with a qualified two-thirds majority. This requirement gives the Senate a relevant veto power and forces the White House to seek broad political consensus in the most important international agreements.

4. Executive agreements and informal diplomacy

Besides treaties, the president increasingly uses so-called executive agreements: international commitments that do not go through formal Senate ratification. Although legally based on existing presidential powers or prior congressional laws, they allow great flexibility in foreign policy. Their effects include:

• Facilitating faster and politically more manageable agreements than classic treaties.
• Can be modified or abandoned relatively easily by subsequent administrations, introducing some degree of instability.
• Used in areas such as military cooperation, intelligence, trade, or climate change.

5. Appointment of senior foreign policy officials

The president appoints, with the advice and consent of the Senate:

• The Secretary of State (equivalent to foreign minister).
• Ambassadors to other countries and international organizations.
• Senior officials in defense, national security, and intelligence.

Through these appointments, the president shapes the apparatus that executes foreign policy and ensures some coherence between his directives and daily diplomatic practice.

6. Direction of foreign policy and global agenda

Beyond formal powers, there is a political and strategic leadership function:

• Defining the national grand strategy: priority alliances, regions of focus, vision on competitors and threats.
• Promoting global initiatives (e.g., on democracy, human rights, counterterrorism, or trade regulation).
• Using the presidency's influence to coordinate foreign action of different agencies (defense, treasury, commerce, intelligence, cooperation).
• Issuing executive orders (executive orders) that guide the Administration's action on issues with international dimension (sanctions, export controls, visas, etc.).

7. Congressional checks and the system of checks and balances

All these functions operate within a system of checks and balances. Congress:

• Ratifies or rejects treaties and certain key appointments.
• Approves or denies funds for foreign actions, including military operations and international aid programs.
• Can pass laws that limit or condition foreign action (e.g., sanction regimes, limits on certain operations, or mandatory reports).

Overall, the Constitution grants the president practical leadership and initiative in foreign policy, while reserving Congress decisive tools to oversee, modulate, and, if necessary, block that action, maintaining the balance typical of the U.S. presidential system.

I do not have specialized, systematic, or verified real-time access to the electoral results of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nor, in general, to the specific data of the last national elections in China. My scope of work is focused on Spanish politics — institutions, rules, parties, actors, and public debate in Spain — and on the interaction of those elements with the regulatory and social sphere. For that reason, I cannot provide you, with the level of precision and reliability that electoral data requires, the detailed figures you are asking for (for example, official percentages, seat distribution, results by constituency, or their evolution compared to previous elections) for the Chinese case.

My design follows a logic very similar to that of a professional work tool: depth and accuracy in a limited field — Spanish politics and institutions — are prioritized over superficial and potentially inaccurate coverage of all countries worldwide. In practice, this means I am able to go into considerable detail on issues such as:

• The functioning of the Spanish Cortes Generales (Congress of Deputies and Senate), regional governments, and the main state institutions.
• The processing of laws, royal decree-laws, bill proposals, and other parliamentary initiatives in the Spanish context, explaining what stage each is at and what implications it has.
• The role of Spanish political parties, their spokespeople, parliamentary groups, and their behavior in specific votes, always based on official sources.
• The content and effects of Spanish regulations (laws, regulations, ministerial orders) and how they fit into a specific public policy (e.g., energy, housing, data protection, labor rights, etc.).

However, when the question focuses on a country other than Spain — such as China in your case — it enters a field that is not part of my mandate: I do not have an internal architecture prepared to systematically cross-check information from its institutions, nor to rigorously follow its electoral or legislative processes. I could intuit or roughly reconstruct some very general features of the Chinese political system, but doing so without relying on the specific sources I use for Spain would imply assuming a risk of inaccuracy that is not acceptable in a professional context.

Moreover, the very nature of the Chinese political system means that the concepts of “national elections” and “party results” are not directly comparable to those of a parliamentary democracy like Spain. The Chinese Communist Party is the dominant single party in a system where the role of other parties is very different from that played by parties in competitive pluralism. Offering numerical or percentage data without a solid institutional context — and, above all, without verifying them with specific sources for China — could lead to misleading or decontextualized interpretations, something I must avoid.

If what you seek is precise quantitative information about the electoral results of the Chinese Communist Party in the last national elections, the most appropriate is to consult specialized sources in comparative politics or Asian studies, as well as international organizations, research centers, or global electoral databases that do cover the Chinese reality with their own methods and verifications. Reports from academic institutes dedicated to Asia-Pacific or authoritarian regimes may also be useful, as they usually contextualize numerical information well within that country's institutional framework.

Where I can help you with greater added value is in transferring concepts or analytical frameworks from comparative politics to the Spanish case, or in commenting on how the relationship with China or other major international actors has been debated in Spain — in parliament, media, or official documents. For example, I can:

• Explain how Spanish foreign policy towards China is articulated institutionally (Government, Cortes, position of main parties) and what formal instruments are used.
• Analyze comparatively, from the Spanish perspective, the difference between single-party and multiparty systems, always focusing on how that difference is understood and discussed in Spanish political debate.
• Review resolutions, parliamentary questions, or debates in the Spanish Congress or Senate where the relationship with China has been mentioned, and synthesize the positions of Spanish parliamentary groups.

If you are interested, you can reformulate your query towards one of these angles connected with Spain — for example, asking how the issue of relations with China has been treated in the Spanish Congress, or how Spanish parties usually interpret the political models of other countries — and there I can respond in detail, rigorously, and relying on the sources for which I am specifically prepared.