‘Inevitable’ Xi now more confident than ever before

Chinese President Xi Jinping was scheduled to arrive in Washington at 2:00am (BST) today for a high-stakes three-day summit with US President Donald Trump. 
It is inevitable that Xi would be more confident than ever before, given China’s consolidated manufacturing dominance, stronger military, and greater domestic consolidation.  
This time, the Chinese president will be sitting down with his US counterpart in a vastly different position than the last time the two men met face-to-face nearly a decade ago.  
Striking a firm tone ahead of the leadership summit, Chinese ambassador to the US warned on Wednesday Taiwan and human rights are "red lines" for China that cannot be crossed.  
Writing in the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily, Ambassador Xie Feng said managing differences hinges on good faith, and the US should stop "fabricating pretexts" such as national security, economic imbalances and forced labour to try to and constrain China.
When China and the US cooperate, both benefit, but when they confront each other, both suffer, he added. 
"China's sovereignty, security, and development interests cannot be violated, and four red lines — the Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, development paths and systems, and development rights — cannot be challenged," Xie said.
At that 2017 summit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, China was lagging America on multiple fronts and vulnerable to the tech and trade frictions Trump would unleash on it in the coming year.
Now, Xi arrives at the helm of a country that’s transformed.
When the Chinese president arrives in Washington, he was expected to get a rare greeting from Trump, who will be on the tarmac to welcome his counterpart’s plane instead of waiting for him to drive up to the White House.
The world’s second largest economy has emerged as a tech heavyweight. Home-grown tech talent is spurring Chinese AI models ever closer to Silicon Valley’s frontier. Beijing-based space firms are launching and landing reuseable rockets with their sights on global champion SpaceX. Companies from energy to AI, robots and memory chips have launched blockbuster stock debuts over the past year.
China’s manufacturing juggernaut racked up a $1.2 trillion global trade surplus last year, due in part to surging demand for its electric vehicles, solar panels and chips. Its grip on the supply chains for some exports – especially rare earths – has given Beijing unique leverage over Washington and Trump’s “America First” trade war.
And at a moment when the US is antagonising allies and has yet to find a way to end its war on Iran that’s destabilising the global economy, Xi has been burnishing China’s image as a responsible and dependable global leader.
“China is far more confident than nine years ago and what’s even more important is that today China has found an effective way to keep the US in check,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Shanghai’s Fudan University, who advises the government on foreign policy.
“Washington has to treat Beijing with more equality, respect and this relationship has to be more and more reciprocal.”
But buoyed by China’s growing global and technological clout, Xi will also be presenting to the US a new reality: while Beijing wants a stable relationship with the US, its rise doesn’t depend on it.
For Xi, a key source of that confidence has been China’s ability to diversify trade away from the US market and build out its technological self-sufficiency – two mandates sharpened by pressures on China from the first Trump administration.
Beijing has funneled vast financing and political will toward building its own technology in cutting-edge sectors – like robotics, AI, biotech, space, new energy and chips – and applying that tech into industry.
China is now seen more positively than the US in most of 36 countries surveyed in a new Pew Research poll published in July. Xi even edged out Trump in winning people’s confidence, the pollsters found.