Media Mentions

“It will be difficult to get the Chinese deeply involved under any circumstances,” said Kurt Campbell, a former deputy secretary of state during President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and chair of The Asia Group. “They will want to be careful because they can see political quicksand as well as the next guy.”

“China enters this summit with genuine leverage but also genuine urgency,” Han Lin, China country director at Washington-based consultancy The Asia Group, told AFP.

“The American collective psyche – with the exception of President Trump and a few business people – appears to have decided that there’s something inherently threatening about Chinese investment,” says Kurt Tong, a former US consul general in Hong Kong and managing partner at advisory firm The Asia Group.

“The priority at this point is having the summit take place, having the two of them meet face-to-face,” said Alison Szalwinski, vice president at the Asia Group. “And ensuring that U.S.-China relations are on stable footing. That’s the priority, even as Iran continues to loom.”

Kurt M. Campbell is Chairman and Co-Founder of The Asia Group. He served as Deputy Secretary of State and Indo-Pacific Coordinator at the National Security Council during the Biden administration.  

Trump appears to be courting investments and seeking deals, while China hawks are pushing a harder line on Beijing, George Chen, a partner at The Asia Group, a strategic advisory firm, told DealBook. Still, many analysts say Xi has the upper hand. Watch Taiwan, a close U.S. partner. Xi wants to strike deals with Trump,

Some in the Trump administration believe “the outcome that matters more than any set of deliverables is stability and space for continued engagement, both to build domestic resilience and to facilitate future deal-making,” said Brett Fetterly, a managing principal at the consultancy The Asia Group who focuses on China.

(0:0:56) Kurt Campbell, chairman of The Asia Group, says the timing is awkward. “It is remarkable that President Trump is prepared to go to China under these circumstances, but may I also say that it is also deeply unusual that China is prepared to host him!”

Kurt Campbell, the architect of the US pivot to Asia and former Deputy Secretary of State under Joe Biden, says next week’s summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is highly unusual and could be politically awkward, given the ongoing crisis in Iran. Dr Campbell, the chairman and co-founder of The Asia Group, argued that

Kelly Magsamen, who was chief of staff to Biden’s defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, says that in normal circumstances, there would be some kind of US military demonstration ahead of the summit, such as a dual carrier strike group operation in the South China Sea, as a show of strength.