Chinese foreign minister calls for Washington, Beijing to ‘overcome obstacles’ ahead of summit

There is a familiar choreography to U.S.-China diplomacy: a tense stretch, a flurry of preparatory meetings, and then a high-stakes summit where both leaders project control while the details remain murky. Wang Yi's meeting with Ambassador Perdue fits that pattern almost perfectly. The phrase "overcome obstacles" is diplomatic code—it acknowledges that problems exist without conceding which side bears responsibility for them. That ambiguity is intentional, and it serves both governments domestically. What makes this particular summit interesting is the timing. President Trump has long styled himself as the dealmaker who can crack the China puzzle that eluded his predecessors, while President Xi has positioned China as the steady, predictable power in a volatile world. Both narratives are on the line in a single meeting. For Beijing, the trip is an opportunity to demonstrate that engagement with Washington remains viable regardless of who occupies the White House. For Washington, it is a chance to show that American pressure—on tariffs, on chip exports, on the South China Sea—can produce results at the negotiating table. The reference to "obstacles" is worth parsing carefully. It is a broad term, and deliberately so. It could encompass the export control regime on advanced semiconductors, the ongoing dispute over fentanyl precursor chemicals, the question of Taiwan, or the more recent friction over Chinese investments in sensitive sectors. The fact that Wang did not specify suggests that the agenda is still being shaped, or that both sides prefer to keep their cards close. In either case, the public posture is one of managed expectations—both capitals are signaling that progress will be incremental, not transformative. There is also a structural reality beneath the diplomatic pleasantries. The U.S. and China are locked in a competition that neither can fully escape, and their economic interdependence has become more selective and more strategic over the past decade. A summit can reset the tone, but it cannot resolve the underlying structural tension. What it can do is establish guardrails—agreements on crisis communication, on military-to-military contacts, on the rules of the road for economic competition. That may be the realistic best case, and it is not nothing. Source: https://thehill.com/policy/international/6054943-chinese-foreign-minister-wang-yi-us-relations-trump-xi-summit/