The Guardian view on Trump in Beijing: the US and China are playing the waiting game | Editorial

The president's meeting with Xi Jinping was superficially cordial, extending a truce borne of necessity

American strength back on the world stage," crowed the White House social media post: a curious remark, when the attached video showed the stars and stripes fluttering beneath a long row of Chinese flags, and People's Liberation Army soldiers marching in unison.

This week's visit to Beijing offered the kind of style that Donald Trump enjoys - parading troops, a banquetand a polite if not markedly enthusiastic welcome from a strongman he called really a friend" - but little apparent substance. The public account of the encounter will be partial: Mr Trump's former adviser John Bolton has claimed that in previous conversations the US president begged Xi Jinping for help to win re-election and urged him to go ahead" with internment camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang. But this meeting appears to have been about stabilising therelationship, not shifting it.