The tour of the Temple of Heaven is almost like a theatrical performance of the two world leaders, strolling among ancient stones, as their staffs inside the temple stage a performance of goodwill while negotiating deals on aircraft procurement, Iranian oil deliveries and the future of Taiwan. That was on the big screen in Beijing this week, and when Air Force One finally got off the ground Friday afternoon, a truthful scorecard wasn't nearly so glowing as the one both governments scrambled to provide.

Donald Trump departed Beijing with no apparent sense that the US and China had tackled the prickly issues that continue to plague their ties, but at least with a newly stabilized personal relationship with Xi Jinping. Much is left to the "for now".

A summit nine years in the making

This is Trump's first trip to China since 2017 and the timing is significant for context. A lot has happened since that initial visit—from trade tensions to escalating to sweeping restrictions on Chinese technology in the United States, to Chinese manufacturing capacity catching up with the United States in a major way. Put another way, Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies bluntly stated: “China enters this meeting in a better position than it did last year, when it was worried about Trump imposing even modest tariffs. Xi has managed to neutralize and push back much of Trump's actions in the past year.”

This power reallocation is no small detail. It is the story. Today, the US, China, and EU produce about 60 percent of the global GDP, so when the two governments sit face-to-face, all the world's central banks, all the commodity traders and all the economics dependent on exports are watching from the sidelines. The personal chemistry between the two leaders, though fabricated, is no mere gadget, the bilateral trade alone is worth to the order of $575 billion per year.

The business entourage and its message.

Trump brought a very impressive entourage of American corporate power: Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk and Nvidia's Jensen Huang, who all hopped on the trip at the last minute via a stopover in Alaska. The guest list itself was a policy document. For these executives, China is a key source of manufacturing as well as a huge consumer market they cannot afford to lose access to, no matter what Washington's trade warriors might like in theory. The presence of Huang was especially significant as the world remains sensitive about semiconductor exports and Beijing's voracious appetite for cutting-edge chip technology.

This was not a delegation, comprised for diplomatic skills. It was set up to convey a message about the type of relationship both governments wish to show – a commercially viable relationship that is both profitable and photo-ready.

What was officially announced — and what's not confirmed.

Trump said that Xi agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets, a transaction that is estimated to be worth about $20 to $25 billion at list prices, although most deals in the world are done at discount prices. Meanwhile, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer suggested that Washington is hoping that China will pledge to purchase "double-digit billion" dollars of American ag goods annually for the next three years. Export licenses for hundreds of American plants were apparently renewed, having expired during the past year, for beef production.

When interpreted literally these are significant numbers. With Boeing experiencing a difficult period of financial and reputational pressure, it desperately requires orders from China. China is its biggest export market for its planes and the previous arrangement to divide orders more or less equally between Boeing and Airbus has been thrown off course due to years of trade tensions. The restoration of any one of those pipelines is significant to jobs in the U.S. aerospace industry and manufacturing in general.

However, as of Friday, China hadn't confirmed these specific deals, and no major deal was announced on rare earths or on artificial intelligence investment, where Beijing has some leverage and Washington had some hopes. The White House readout was general in terms of trade. Beijing's version of events urged the two sides to "expand exchanges and cooperation" in "agriculture, health and tourism," which is diplomatic-speak for a lot of nothing.

The one analyst that keeps swirling around Asia-watchers is that Beijing is playing a game of “phased negotiation” in these discussions – commitments are kept deliberately reversible, timed along the American political calendar. The more Washington approaches the 2026 midterm elections, the more a tangible diplomatic success will be important to Trump and the more leverage China has in the delay, the argument goes.

Iran: the elephant in the Zhongnanhai garden

The war with Iran hung over all. China is very close to Tehran diplomatically and is the leading buyer of its oil, and has always portrayed itself as a proponent of peace during the conflict. Washington had high hopes that Trump would force Xi to actively lobby Iran into terms agreeable to the United States.

What they came up with instead was ambiguity in cautious language. Trump told Fox News that Xi offered to help, and promised him that he wouldn't provide Iran with military gear. In a separate interview, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US hasn't sought Chinese assistance in settling the conflict. The two statements do not sit comfortably next to each other, and indicate that the meeting in Beijing was more exploratory than definitive with regard to Iran.

As Iran's biggest trade partner and biggest buyer of oil, China has some leverage over Tehran, but Beijing has had little interest in using that leverage in ways that would advance U.S. foreign policy goals. While it said it was both sides' understanding that Beijing was backing "the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's non-nuclearization," those are points Beijing has already reiterated on multiple occasions. In the Foreign Ministry release, published in Chinese, the war "should have never happened," an implication that damns the Americans and Israelis as responsible for the war, not China as a solution-broker.

The Strait of Hormuz dimension is of huge economic significance. About 20 percent of the world's oil transshipment goes through them, and any prolonged disturbance has immediate repercussions on oil prices, inflation data and consumers' mood — even in the United States, where gas prices have already jumped as a result of the war. Part of the reason Trump came to Beijing is he needs Xi's help to find an off ramp. He left without it.

A message that could not be overlooked.

But Xi saved his hottest rhetoric for Taiwan and made plain that the matter is “the most important in China-US relations” and that if it is dealt with improperly, “collision or conflict” between the two countries would be possible. Unusually forthright wording for Chinese diplomacy, which is usually diplomatically vague. The decision to say what they say is purposeful.

Given Trump's transactional view of foreign policy, analysts had been worried ahead of the summit that he may give ground on Taiwan issues in exchange for trade benefits. Rubio was quick to put those fears to rest, however, declaring that America's stance remained the same and that the arms sales issue "did not feature prominently" in the talks. The White House readout did not even mention Taiwan.

In fact, that asymmetry — Xi talking loudly and publicly about Taiwan, the White House not acknowledging it — is telling. Washington was looking for the trade story. The Taiwan warning was put on the record, which was Beijing's desire. They both achieved what they set out to achieve, at least in spirit.

As some analysts point out, the real problem is the deeper structural one of the current U.S. stance of Taiwan, which has not always been consistent for allies and adversaries. While that ambiguity might provide some short-term diplomatic flexibility, it may also produce longer-term instability in a relationship with huge stakes attached to the possibility of a miscalculation.

Pageantry as policy

The ceremonial aspect cannot be ignored. Xi met Trump on the tarmac with his vice president, Han Zheng, whom Trump saw as a sign of respect — something China made a point of ensuring during their meeting on the tarmac, which Trump definitely appreciates. At the Great Hall of the People, Trump was greeted with military bands, a troop inspection and a sea of children waving flags, which Trump has said he has been treated "very well" to.

That was stagecraft for a reason. Beijing ensured that Trump was at ease, and thus preserved the overall structure of the "constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability" as they now describe it. What that line of messaging means for managed competition isn't as clear as it sounds, and that's the big question.

Harvard's Graham Allison, who popularized the “Thucydides Trap” – the historical tendency for a rising and ruling power to clash – suggested that the summit truce could be formalized, pointing out that Xi himself raised the question of whether the two countries could transcend “that pattern”. It's a good way of framing it. In the 20th century, great-power relations did not lack examples of seemingly stable relations that suddenly turned discordant.

The press release and reality gap in reading

So, what this summit has yielded, minus the hoopla, is some of the following: a warmer relationship between the two leaders than a year ago; some vague commitments to trade that have not been detailed; a Chinese stance on Iran that hasn't budged an inch, plus a Taiwan warning that Washington didn't want to publicize, and a mutual agreement to continue talking.

It's not nothing. In an era where the relations between the United States and China have been swinging back and forth between escalation and uneasy pause for almost a decade, it is important that there is a stabilized tone at the top. It responds to markets, allies adjust to it, and it leaves room for lower level officials to work out the details that summits don't.

Stabilisation isn't resolution. Two days of banquets and garden walks in Beijing have not resolved the structural tensions between the world's two largest economies, over technology supply chains, over Taiwan's status, over the global order itself and over rare earth. As one analyst observed, while high-level summits are frequently regarded as historic turning points, the key factors driving US-China relations are structural, long term, and are already underway.

However, Trump departed Beijing with a smile on his face and with some orders for aircraft in the books. How much this will result in anything lasting beyond his 2017 visit, when $250 billion in announced deals were made but then quietly disappear in the following years, will be determined by time. Scepticism should not be ruled out on previous form.