'Trump views US-China relations as a personal friendship: Xi views US as an adversary to be managed'

Home Americas To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 12:40 Issued on: 24/09/2026 - 17:01 Erin Ogunkeye is pleased to welcome Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The US remains a powerful actor in its relationship with China. But power on paper is not the same thing as leverage at the negotiating table. Levin warns that President Trump’s highly personalized approach to Xi Jinping offers Beijing opportunities that China can easily exploit. Xi does not approach the relationship in the same way. Au contraire, he sees the United States as an adversary to be managed while China pursues its domestic priorities and strategic objectives in Asia, including on Taiwan. Keywords for this article