How Xi Is Using a TikTok Tradeoff to Court Trump

For years, Chinese officials denounced U.S. demands that TikTok’s Chinese owner sell its American operations as daylight robbery. Now Chinese state media are hailing what might be an agreement to do just that as a win-win. And on Friday, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Trump are expected to speak by phone to bless the deal.

For China, the apparent reversal would be a way to offer the president the semblance of a win on an issue close to his heart — saving the hugely popular video app that he credits for helping him connect with young voters and win re-election. In exchange, Beijing is able to buy itself more room to negotiate on the matters it cares about most: tariffs, technology and Taiwan.

“There’s much bigger fish to fry,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington. “If China can use these small concessions to trade for a positive atmosphere, better U.S.-China relations, they will want to do it,” she said, referring to TikTok.

The TikTok deal and the phone call could pave the way for a potential summit next month, their first in-person meeting of Mr. Trump’s second term. Beijing would prefer to host Mr. Trump, but the two leaders could also meet on the sidelines of an upcoming regional summit in South Korea.

TikTok may have always been a bargaining chip for China. The fate of the app in the United States, where it is deemed a national security threat, pales in comparison to Beijing’s other problems like U.S. export controls and tariffs, which could constrain China’s own economic and technological development.

TikTok’s recommendation algorithm is also less novel and therefore less important to the Chinese leadership than it was five years ago when the saga over the app began.

All that makes TikTok “an expendable concession,” according to Dimitar Gueorguiev, director of Chinese studies at Syracuse University. “Chinese officials have let the issue fester for years, holding it in reserve as a problem they could one day solve to defuse pressure from Washington,” he said. “A deal now costs Beijing less than when negotiations started, while still yielding the maximum optics of compromise.”

In Beijing’s calculus, the moment to use the TikTok card is now when China, with its chokehold over critical minerals, believes that it holds maximum leverage that it can use in a meeting with Mr. Trump. China processes nearly 90 percent of the world’s rare earth metals needed to produce cars, wind turbines, jets and more.

“The Chinese side is much more experienced and has much more tolerance and is much more tactical,” said Li Daokui, a prominent economist at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “They know what the U.S. wants and they understand Trump’s negotiating style.”

To entice Mr. Trump, China could commit to buying more U.S. soybeans — something the president has publicly said he hopes would happen — or buy Boeing aircraft.

But Beijing would need to act quickly to make good on any such promise. It is late to bid on this year’s soybean crop and Boeing’s order book is quickly filling up. China’s leaders also face real risks in negotiating with someone as unpredictable as Mr. Trump.

“They understand that there needs to be a trade deal to pave the ground for Trump to come to China, and they want to make sure this is not retractable — that they don’t put their hearts on the table and the U.S. just stabs it with a knife,” Dr. Sun said.

“They cannot predict whether or not that will happen again, but they know if it does that will be humiliating for the Chinese leader.”

The image of Mr. Trump as the latest in a long line of world leaders traveling to Beijing to pay their respects to China’s most powerful leader in decades would bolster Mr. Xi’s credibility at home, where officials are struggling to revive the economy. Such a trip would also convey the idea of the Chinese leader being courted by the U.S. president.

“China will want to demonstrate that the U.S. needs it more,” said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser for U.S.-China relations at the International Crisis Group.

Perhaps more important, a state visit gives Beijing the ability to control the optics and try to avoid the kind of public upbraiding by Mr. Trump that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine faced at the White House in February.

Momentum has been building for a meeting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have spoken with their Chinese counterparts in recent weeks, and Mr. Trump has for months signaled his interest in meeting the Chinese leader, whom the president describes as a “good friend” and has repeatedly said he admires.

Beijing will likely push for relief from tariffs imposed by Mr. Trump over what he says is its failure to stop chemicals used to make fentanyl from reaching his country. China also wants Washington to loosen export controls on advanced chips and to cut back its support of Taiwan, which Beijing claims is part of China.

Friday’s conversation would be an opportunity for the leaders to see whether they can agree on more deals that both can claim as wins, in order to make a summit worthwhile.

“This call will help determine whether the two sides are there, or whether they opt for a less consequential engagement” on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, said Amanda Hsiao, the China director for the Eurasia Group, a firm that advises investors.

Chinese officials have said that the outlines of an agreement struck in Madrid earlier this week with their U.S. counterparts goes beyond TikTok and includes lowering investment barriers and improving trade and economic cooperation topics that are also likely to come up during the call.

Mr. Xi may also urge Mr. Trump to strike his own path and ignore more hawkish voices in his administration that the Chinese leader sees as seeking to contain China. The last time the two leaders spoke by phone, in June, Mr. Xi compared the relationship between the United States and China to a large ship kept on course by two powerful helmsmen. He warned the president to “steer clear of various disturbances or even sabotage.”

“There are important differences of opinion between Trump and his advisers. China will likely to seek to probe and exploit those differences,” said Mr. Wyne of the International Crisis Group.

The fact that the two leaders are speaking at all suggests to some that the relationship is steadying. Whether that continues depends on how the in-person meeting between the two leaders goes.

“Until then we cannot say for sure, OK, this is a relatively stable and predictable relationship,” said Wu Xinbo, the dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. “I can tell we are moving in that direction but the major indicator will be the forthcoming summit.”

Pei-Lin Wu contributed to this report.