Trump–Xi Meeting Trade, Sanctions, and the Iran Conflict

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]And as we have been reporting next week President Trump heads to Beijing for meeting with Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. To dive into the long-delayed trip, we're now pleased to be joined by David Zhang. He's host of David on China, which you can watch on YouTube. David, let's start with the Iran war. How do you think Beijing's trip will affect the war and how will the Iran war affect the agenda with Trump and Xi?

[00:00:24]Yeah, good morning. I think the uh prior meeting that happened before this trip with President Trump uh was meeting with Iran's foreign minister. And you see in the readout from the China-Iran meetings that it was clear that China's bottom line is supporting Iran's nuclear enrichment. So this is I believe a fundamental uh sort of understanding of what the CCP wants in the region, which is to have Iran continue to be a sort of a distractor/chaotic factor for the CCP. But also at the same time, we're not seeing any indication that it is trying to reduce the amount of support. Obviously, with President Trump visiting, they're going to start to show some signs uh signs of let's say, we're not going to physically send ships with with uh weaponry into uh Iran, but they're still going to be economically supporting uh Iran as we speak and I think continue to do so, but maybe in the temporary sort of uh few weeks or even a month ahead that they will sort of calm down a bit, but in the long term, they want Iran to continue to be China's proxy in the Middle East.

[00:01:24]And then how does the naval blockade affect China's benefit on this discounted sanctioned oil with Iran and thus the tension with the US?

[00:01:33]Well, it clearly it does matter to China to see the Strait of Hormuz open up again. Uh I think China fundamentally wants to get to a place where the CCP where the the strait is open, but Iran continues to enrich uh new uranium. But at the same time, China does have a sort of a a large reserve of of storage of oil, so they can last a while if it really comes down to the dire situation as they've been preparing for the Taiwan invasion. But over the long term, you know, the price of refiner price of especially the manufacturing and export sector is going to skyrocket, and that's no good. So, I think China wants to find some sort of a common ground in this visit from the president and see if that they can somehow get to a place where they can get the flow of oil back.

[00:02:16]Now, let's shift over to China's internal dynamics, and let's talk about human rights for a moment. President Trump said he will raise the plight of Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai. Some of our observers have said that human rights abuses such as forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong and Uyghurs it's so egregious that it actually represents the the legitimacy of the CCP itself. It could actually be their Achilles heel because the crime is so heinous and the scale is so industrialized. Where does human rights fit into the agenda with Trump?

[00:02:51]Yeah, as the Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in the press conference 2 days ago that it is a crucial issue for the administration. I think the key here is to understand what the CCP uses human rights as a sort of a bargaining chip for. It's that in recent administrations before the Trump administration, there's been a lot of discussion to raise human rights issues in these meetings, and as I'm sure the Trump administration also does, but they always have this fundamental bottom line the CCP that is to say that if you want us to fundamentally get anything done, don't talk and criticize our record on human rights or try to stop us from doing what you accuse us of doing. And this is because a lot of the CCP's internal sort of officials promotion and rise to power came with persecution of Falun Gong, persecution of Uyghurs, and even just in general creating these apparatus such as the censorship and the firewall of the firewall of censorship and other sort of censorship apparatuses.

[00:03:48]Uh They they came up with this to to get power that they had to be involved in this. So, it's almost like they have this blood tie to these persecutions and human rights violations. And you mentioned Jimmy Lai, you know, the the idea of stamping out press freedom in Hong Kong is an achievement to certain CCP officials and that's how they maintain influence and power in the party. So, for them to give that up, you can imagine how hard that would be. But, I do think that the Trump administration still has the key here. It is that I think Xi Jinping personally wants the president to back him up in this uh internal power struggle that's happening in the party right now.

[00:04:25]Yeah, let's explore that a little bit because that is something that in open Western societies is really quite foreign and I'm always shocked and amazed when when you bring us through it a little bit. But, as I understand, she has purged some generals and they are now facing uh the death sentence and potentially that could be commuted down to life imprisonment. But, um help us understand how that happens, what are the dynamics at play? And you also mentioned that Xi himself is trying to um sort of embolden his own position and use this visit with Trump to help him within these internal power struggles.

[00:05:04]What's going on?

[00:05:06]Yeah, well, this is unprecedented in the sense that both were former defense ministers who were also at the same time holding titles of uh members of the Central Committee. So, this is reaching sort of a level where you see that uh they haven't reached before in terms of purging individuals and handing them down with such a devastating sentence uh so to speak. The reason why I say it's devastating is because what they're saying this time, contrary to previous uh sort of purchase of corruption, which by the way, corruption is never the main issue, is that they're saying even after the 2 years death with reprieve that they are still going to be uh spending the the rest of their life in prison with no parole. But, something interesting I just recently found out about these two generals is that there is a line which indicates that it doesn't mention they give up the idea of trying to raise another loss or obviously losses in China don't really matter, but trying to appeal.

[00:05:58]What this tells us overall is that there is a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission called Zhang Youxia.

[00:06:05]His investigation is directly tied to the downfall of these two generals as these were associates of of him in the previous military ranks. And so what they're trying to do, or at least the Xi Jinping camp is trying to do is build a case against the downfall of Zhang Youxia, which by the way, after a few months of so-called leaking nuclear secrets and economic corruption, we still haven't gotten the results of those investigations on Zhang Youxia.

[00:06:30]And what at the same time is happening is the anti-Xi factions are also targeting individuals who are close to the Xi Jinping camp. So there's sort of a dual administration running the show in China right now, and I think this is a again where I mentioned Xi Jinping needs the the president's visit to sort of buy some legitimacy back into his his stand in the party right now.

[00:06:54]So much at stake and you know, the casual Western observer would not know any of that. We appreciate you breaking it down. David Jang, you can watch David on YouTube, David on China. Thanks so much.

[00:07:06]Thank you.