China keeps faith in Trump as ‘total defeat’ adds new risks

As Chinese netizens pored over the wreckage of the Republican losses in the midterm US elections, the hashtag “Trump Total Defeat” went viral on microblogging platform Weibo, garnering more than 70 million views by Wednesday evening.

China calls the US midterm elections a domestic affair and expects bilateral stability to hold ahead of his next summit with Xi Jinping. (AP)Officials in Beijing, however, quickly signaled business as usual. Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, described the elections as a US “domestic affair” during a regular briefing, while showing faith in advancing “understandings reached by the two heads of state,” Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, whose third summit of the year unfolds in two weeks’ time.

China will “expand cooperation, and build a China-US relationship based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation,” Mao said.

After Trump’s return to the White House, Beijing endured a sweeping trade war in 2025 that took tariff rates to triple digits. Since then, however, China has stabilized its relationship with the US, ushering in a mutual period of strategic stability that’s seen Washington show restraint on chip curbs and on its support for Taiwan.

As Trump enters the lame-duck stage of his presidency, foreign policy will remain one of the key levers under his control, sowing risk of renewed turbulence should he aim to set new agendas. Even so, prominent voices in China expect the bilateral calm to last.

“The overall stability is sustainable at least ’till the end of this term,” said Da Wei, director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. “But within this framework of stability, I expect more noise and more pressure from Congress.”

On China’s X-like Weibo, users were less restrained as the scale of the electoral rout became clear.

“Trump’s total defeat demonstrates that relying on the incitement of emotions and the creation of division is not a sustainable path to governance,” a Weibo commentator with 4 million followers wrote. “Once ‘Make America Great Again’ was reduced to an empty slogan, all that remained was a fractured society and a tarnished international reputation.”

Two years after Trump swept to victory determined to ratchet up economic confrontation with Beijing, the US president is now acting as a restraint on lawmakers with far more hawkish views on China. A series of bills pending in Congress would tighten US export curbs.

The Match Act, for example, would direct the administration to identify chip equipment and Chinese manufacturing facilities that should be restricted, while pressing allies to adopt controls just as stringent as those faced by US companies.

A Democratic-led Congress may lead to more oversight of the administration’s tariff exemptions, enforcement of export controls and deals involving sensitive semiconductor technology, said Ben Kostrzewa, an international trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells and a former US trade official. That would subject Trump’s bargaining with Beijing to greater scrutiny, even as his broad executive powers leave lawmakers with limited scope to dictate foreign policy.

“This new equilibrium will force both sides to work together,” he said. “Any sanctions or unilateral behavior would do damage on both sides and lead to a lose-lose situation.”

An extension to the trade truce at Xi’s summit with Trump in September — the second of potentially four meetings between the two leaders this year — bought them more time even as a sharp divide remains over issues like Taiwan and AI development.

The Trump administration has held up a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan, after already approving record weapons sales to Taipei in December last year.

Beijing has repeatedly urged Washington to halt arms sales to the island, saying they violate the one-China principle and agreements governing US-China relations. The Taiwan Relations Act, however, requires Washington to make defensive weapons available to Taiwan in quantities necessary for it to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities.

Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a state-run nationalist tabloid, said he believed Trump would seek to maintain a stable relationship with China.

“The current equilibrium in US-China relations is the result of a contest of strength, and over the past two years, Trump’s respect for China’s national power has gradually grown,” Hu wrote in a Weibo post. “While the midterm elections may shift the balance of power within the United States, an intensification of internal American political strife will not provide Washington with any additional tools to exert coercion against China.”

Trump’s weakened grip over Congress could inadvertently help the newly stabilized relationship between the US and China. Since the president will hold less sway with lawmakers, he’ll wield fewer bargaining chips in negotiations with Beijing, according to Feng Chucheng, founding partner of Beijing-based Hutong Research.

“Trump retains considerable discretion to negotiate with Xi, but his ability to deliver on certain promises to Beijing will be more constrained,” he said. “This makes the boundaries of any potential US-China deal clearer, even if it narrows the scope for bargaining.”