Analyst says Trump treats US-China ties as personal, while Xi sees Washington as a rival to manage

The contrasting ways US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping approach their bilateral relationship could be shaping the balance of the US-China rivalry, according to Henrietta Levin, a senior fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Speaking to France 24, Levin said Trump tends to treat the relationship with Xi in highly personalized terms, an approach she said offers openings that Beijing can readily exploit. Xi, by contrast, does not reciprocate that framing, instead viewing the United States as an adversary to be carefully managed while China pursues its own domestic priorities and strategic objectives across Asia, including on Taiwan.

Levin's analysis suggests that despite the United States' considerable structural power in the relationship, that power does not automatically translate into leverage at the negotiating table, particularly when the two leaders approach their engagement with such different mindsets and objectives.

The assessment comes amid continued attention to how the world's two largest economies manage an increasingly complex relationship spanning trade, technology competition and security issues in the Indo-Pacific region, including the unresolved status of Taiwan.

Analysts like Levin argue that understanding this asymmetry in approach is important for assessing how future high-level engagements between the two leaders might unfold, and whether personal rapport can substitute for a coherent long-term strategy.