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After meeting with China\u2019s top diplomat<\/a> in Malaysia last summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio uttered a line that made few waves at the time but would later help pave the way for an abrupt change.<\/p>\n The United States and China, Mr. Rubio said, had an \u201copportunity here to achieve some strategic stability\u201d and find areas of cooperation. He used the phrase again in February while talking about China<\/a> in the Caribbean, also to little notice.<\/p>\n Chinese officials picked up on Mr. Rubio\u2019s remarks and suggested to their U.S. counterparts even rosier language to describe ties between the two nations, according to two people with knowledge of the previously unreported diplomacy.<\/p>\n The new phrase \u2014 \u201cconstructive strategic stability\u201d \u2014 was rolled out<\/a> by both governments during President Trump\u2019s meeting in Beijing<\/a> last month with the leader of China, Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Although the language sounds stiff and somewhat vague, such diplomatic terms serve as important guideposts. The new catchphrase signals to agencies in both nations, and to other powers, that the United States and China \u2014 the world\u2019s two largest economies and most powerful militaries \u2014 are looking to work together or limit hostilities, notably on trade and Taiwan.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s new policy with Beijing has stirred questions and anxieties across Asia, from Taipei to Delhi to Manila, sending officials in the region scrambling to recalibrate their own approaches to the United States and China.<\/p>\n The signals from the Americans became sharper over a series of official visits to Asia in recent weeks: Mr. Trump and his top aides to Beijing; Mr. Rubio to India; and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to Singapore.<\/p>\n At an annual military forum, Mr. Hegseth said there was \u201crightful alarm<\/a>\u201d in Asia about China\u2019s military buildup and activities, but he also declared<\/a>, \u201cWe respect their ambitions.\u201d He did not mention Taiwan<\/a>, making him the first defense secretary<\/a> in more than a decade not to do so at the forum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After his meetings in China, Mr. Trump effusively praised Mr. Xi, calling him a towering leader out of \u201ccentral casting.\u201d But more important, Mr. Trump said he was holding \u201cin abeyance\u201d arms sales<\/a> to Taiwan as a \u201cnegotiating chip\u201d with China, and that the United States and China were forming a \u201cG2\u201d of equal superpowers. \u201cIt\u2019s the two great countries,\u201d he told Fox News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Current and former officials in the United States and Asia say the message is clear: Mr. Trump intends to accommodate China, and other countries should fall in line.<\/p>\n The new policy is a sharp departure from Mr. Trump\u2019s aggressive approach during his first term. It comes after China\u2019s retaliation during a trade war last year forced Mr. Trump to retreat.<\/p>\n \u201cFor now at least, the perspective of the Chinese government is that their relationship with the Trump administration is better than they had ever expected,\u201d said Yun Sun, a China scholar at the Stimson Center, a foreign policy research group.<\/p>\n \u201cThey see Trump as an opportunity to cultivate a positive view of China,\u201d said Ms. Sun, who was in Beijing during the summit. \u201cThey think maybe they can use the next two and a half years to show people that China isn\u2019t as bad as everyone thinks it is.\u201d She added that Chinese officials are especially keen to sway opinions in foreign policy and national security circles in Washington.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The White House insists that the new \u201cconstructive relationship of strategic stability\u201d is linked to<\/a> \u201cfairness and reciprocity.\u201d In a sign that some competition will continue, the Pentagon on Monday added<\/a> several large Chinese technology companies and an electric carmaker to a list of enterprises linked to China\u2019s military, an effort to limit their global trade.<\/p>\n But China has not adopted the Trump administration\u2019s framing of the new phrase. The Chinese government has stressed<\/a> that the language prioritizes cooperation. \u201cIt should be constant stability where differences are manageable, and the relationship should not be like a roller coaster,\u201d the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Xi has been even bolder. In a speech during the summit, he told Mr. Trump that \u201cgreat changes unseen in a century are accelerating\u201d \u2014 a phrase he has used before to describe the decline of American power. Mr. Xi also urged Mr. Trump to try to avoid the \u201cThucydides Trap,\u201d the theory that a rising power and an established power are likely to go to war<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has acknowledged Mr. Xi\u2019s assertion of superpower equality. In a social media post, he wrote that Mr. Xi had \u201cvery elegantly\u201d mentioned U.S. decline, but argued that was a reference to the Biden era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n China has been pressing the United States to formally recognize it as a peer power for years. Mr. Xi tried to get President Barack Obama to officially state that the two nations had \u201ca new type of great power relations.\u201d Mr. Obama resisted.<\/p>\n But Mr. Trump has given China an opening.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems the president now only sees China as an economic competitor and is trying to come to a modus vivendi with China,\u201d said Shivshankar Menon, a former foreign secretary of India and ambassador to China, using a term that refers to a peaceful coexistence. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seem like this U.S. administration is interested in the broader geostrategic issues in Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n The most obvious \u2014 and to many, most concerning \u2014 shift by Mr. Trump has come on Taiwan. Early this year, to avoid angering Beijing before the summit, the White House ordered the State Department not to move forward with a large package of weapons for Taiwan that Congress had already approved, The New York Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Xi repeatedly warned Mr. Trump about such sales after the administration announced an $11 billion package in December.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s new stance appears to violate a longstanding U.S.-Taiwan diplomatic agreement called the \u201cSix Assurances<\/a>\u201d and the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. Lawmakers from both parties questioned Mr. Rubio last week about Taiwan, but he insisted the policy had not changed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not withholding,\u201d he said of the frozen $14 billion arms package. \u201cIt\u2019s just under review.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps just as worrying for the Taiwanese government and its supporters is Mr. Trump\u2019s language on Taiwan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He has long considered China<\/a> to be much more important than Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island that the Chinese Communist Party aims to absorb, and around which the Chinese military is conducting aggressive air and sea activities. After his Beijing bromance with Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump appeared to blame Taiwan for helping set the stage for potential war.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not looking to have somebody go independent, and you know, we\u2019re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump said that he and Mr. Xi had discussed Taiwan and arms sales to the island \u201cin great detail<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBased on the sum total of what President Trump has said to the media, it seems like he has absorbed a great deal of Xi Jinping\u2019s thinking on Taiwan,\u201d said Bonnie S. Glaser, the managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund. \u201cPeople are anxious.\u201d<\/p>\n In another significant act, Mr. Trump recently decided to allow Nvidia, the American technology company, to sell powerful chips<\/a> to Chinese companies. That move has drawn some criticism from lawmakers and former officials of both parties who had endorsed the Biden administration\u2019s export controls on advanced chips.<\/p>\n China has not immediately approved the imports. But in recent weeks, Chinese executives have sensed a potential easing by Beijing and sought ways to buy the chips, Ms. Sun said. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, hitched a ride on Air Force One<\/a> to fly to China with Mr. Trump when the plane stopped to refuel in Alaska.<\/p>\n Officials across Asia are trying to discern where their nations fit into Mr. Trump\u2019s strategic shift<\/a>. Mr. Rubio\u2019s trip to Delhi after the Beijing summit was aimed at reassuring<\/a> Indian leaders after a tumultuous year and a half of policies and statements by Mr. Trump that have been widely perceived as against India.<\/p>\n But little of substance came from the trip, which included tourism and a gala hosted by the U.S. Embassy alongside a meeting with the top diplomats from Australia, India and Japan, the other members of a group known as the Quad.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Some officials and analysts see Mr. Trump\u2019s warming toward Beijing as leading to an inevitable move away from shared goals with India and other Asian countries.<\/p>\n \u201cThe strategic convergence on China was the glue that held U.S.-India policy together,\u201d said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cNow there\u2019s an absence of that.\u201d<\/p>\n At the forum in Singapore, some analysts said Mr. Hegseth\u2019s speech sidestepped the region\u2019s main concerns and failed to address how the United States planned to recover from the war that it and Israel started with Iran, which has depleted stockpiles of U.S. weapons<\/a> and compelled the American military to move resources out of Asia.<\/p>\n Some American officials and analysts argue that the United States is not backing away from Asia. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is creating a new logistics and refueling hub on the Pacific island of Palau. Training exercises across the region led by the United States have been growing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Exercise Balikatan, the annual joint military drills between the Philippines and the United States, brought together<\/a> 17,000 troops from seven countries in April and May. During the exercise, Japanese combat troops were active in the Philippines for the first time since World War II<\/a>, and the United States tested the Typhon missile system, widely seen as a deterrent against Chinese forces.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was being done as a clear show of force, a demonstration that the United States and its allies could defend against a P.L.A. amphibious assault,\u201d Matt Turpin, a White House national security official in the first Trump administration, wrote afterward<\/a>, referring to the People\u2019s Liberation Army of the People\u2019s Republic of China. \u201cI feel confident that the Trump administration is taking the military threat from the P.R.C. seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n Damien Cave contributed reporting from Singapore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n