US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping told him China would not invade Taiwan while Trump is in office.

In other words, Xi’s iron grip on the military not only endures, it is also indicative of his obsession with breaking the PLA’s insularity and endemic corruption and ensuring that, should he need to bet the regime on the military’s prowess, it will not fail.

The beating of a young girl by three teenagers in southwestern China triggered public outrage, but a compilation viewed hundreds of thousands of times online does not show protests escalating into calls for the ouster of President Xi Jinping.

There has been visible progress. Initial public offerings shrank to nearly a third of 2023 levels last year. Shanghai and Shenzhen-listed companies handed out a combined 2.4 trillion yuan ($334 billion) in cash dividends for 2024, up 9% from the previous year, according to state media.

Donald Trump has claimed that Chinese president Xi Jinping promised not to invade Taiwan while he remains in the White House, as the US leader positions himself as a global dealmaker on some of the world’s most volatile conflicts.

Feng draws on her years of reporting in China to show how the political sands in China are shifting under Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Yet analysts say the Chinese leader is likely holding out for concrete deliverables before agreeing to the high-profile meeting. Trump dramatically escalated the trade war with the world's second-largest economy in April, rolling out sweeping new tariffs that prompted China to respond with its own export duties and other measures.

Xi Jinping’s sweeping purge of the People’s Liberation Army reveals his deep distrust of China’s armed forces, with some saying that his crackdown has stalled Beijing’s military superpower ambition to