Alice Han

This is all about vibes.

The Chinese understand this very, very well.

And they are willing to play the positive music for Trump coming in because he needs to score a real foreign policy gain.

And he will try to do that in Beijing with nothing really substantive.

Maybe a Chinese promise to increase ag purchases and Boeing purchases coming out of the summit.

Welcome to China Decode.

I'm Alice Han.

In today's episode of China Decode, we're discussing the most consequential Trump-Xi meeting yet, how China is quietly absorbing Western innovation, and why Xi keeps purging China's top military leadership.

That's all coming up, but first, let's do a quick check-in with how the markets are starting the week.

On Monday, Chinese stocks rallied with the Shanghai Composite Index breaking above 4,200 points to hit its highest level in over a decade.

Across the Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing exchanges, nearly 2,900 stocks were up.

AI and related tech sectors led the rally, with memory chip stocks Jiang Bolong and Tongyou Technology jumping over 10%.

China's government bond futures fell across the board, with the 30-year main contract dropping 0.39%, the 10-year falling 0.06%, and the 5-year falling 0.03%.

The 10-year government bond yield has been hovering around 1.75%, edging lower ahead of the Trump-Xi summit.

All right, let's get into it.

This week, Trump heads to Beijing for one of the high-stakes meetings of his presidency.

Sitting down with Xi Jinping as the world's two biggest powers, try to study a relationship strained by tariffs,

technological conflict, Taiwan tensions, and now the fallout from the Iran crisis.

The meeting is set to begin this Thursday, and on Friday, James and I will be going live on Substack to talk all about it.

We'll analyze day one of the talks, outlining what's at stake and making sense of what comes next.