With about two weeks left for US President Donald Trump’s planned visit to Beijing beginning March 31, Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times on Monday (March 16) that the trip may, after all, be delayed.

The trip will mark Trump’s first official visit to China in his second term. However, Trump told the FT that China needed to join its plan for countries to deploy warships in the Strait of Hormuz to ensure safe passage amid the conflict in West Asia, and linked it to his visit.

A meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping is anticipated, following a year of tariff tensions between China and the US. These events affected global trade flows, with China turning to other markets. India, which has been negotiating a trade deal with the US, also has interests in this shift, and last week, the Central government announced amendments to a Covid-era policy that restricted Chinese investments.

Finally, Thursday saw the conclusion of China’s annual Two Sessions policy meeting. It saw events like the revision of the GDP growth target (as we detailed last week), the adoption of an ‘ethnic unity’ law and the new Five-Year Plan (2026-30).

Here is a closer look at these developments:

In an interview, Trump told the FT on the question of the Strait of Hormuz, “I think China should help too because China gets 90 per cent of its oil from the Straits [sic],” adding that the matter could not wait till the end of his three-day visit. The actual share, however, may be much lower, with China having increasingly diversified its energy sources. He added that they “may delay” the trip and will see how China responds to the Hormuz plan.

UPSHOT: The comments — and Trump’s ask — threaten the precarious gains made in the bilateral relationship. While a visit would not have single-handedly solved fundamental problems plaguing their ties, ranging from Chinese manufacturing overcapacity to trade imbalances, greater certainty around the event would have indicated an interest in mutually finding some solutions.

The Chinese Communist Party’s newspaper Global Times critically noted the comments. It said of the Hormuz plan: “Is this really about “sharing responsibility” — or is it about sharing the risk of a war that Washington started and can’t finish?”

“The Middle East issues have taught this lesson more than once: Military force can win battles. However, it cannot secure stability or build trust,” it added. Reiterating a diplomatic solution, it said, “Washington is asking who will send warships. Beijing is asking how to stop the war. The contrast in approach is sharp.” This is in line with China’s approach to the conflict so far.

On March 10, the Union Cabinet approved a change in guidelines on investments from countries sharing land borders with India. Instituted six years ago through a document known as Press Note 3 (PN3), it was intended to mainly limit Chinese investors from gaining a controlling share in Indian companies during the pandemic.

The government said that the applicability of PN3 restrictions to cases where land-bordering countries’ investors were having “only non-strategic, non-controlling interests” was adversely affecting investment flows from global investors, including private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) funds.

UPSHOT: At the time, China termed the amendment to the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy as a violation of international trade principles. As The Indian Express reported then, China’s FDI had grown fivefold since 2014 and, by December 2019, its cumulative investment in India exceeded $8 billion.

The shift comes after the Economic Survey 2023-24 made a case for attracting investment from Chinese companies to strengthen India’s export competitiveness.

The survey recognised the growth of the “China plus one strategy.” It elaborated that over the last five years, major multinational companies, including Apple and others, were looking to ‘de-risk’ themselves from China, “primarily due to disruptions caused by COVID-19, growing tensions between the US and China, and rising costs of doing business in China.”

It argued that India could integrate itself into Chinese supply chains or focus on FDI. The latter “seems more promising for boosting India’s exports to the US, similar to how East Asian economies did in the past.” “It is more effective to have Chinese companies invest in India and then export the products to these markets rather than importing from China, adding minimal value, and then re-exporting them,” it said.

The move also comes amid the attempts at normalising the bilateral relationship after the military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh in 2020. Around the time Xi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Russia in October 2024, direct flights resumed, India began to issue visas to the Chinese, and other steps were taken.

As part of Two Sessions, the roadmap for how China plans to deploy its resources and the areas it seeks to prioritise was laid out under the 15th Five-Year Plan.

UPSHOT: According to a translation shared by Bill Bishop, a journalist and China-watcher, goals such as promoting AI applications in industries through an Artificial Intelligence+ initiative, improving birth rates, and reviving domestic consumption were mentioned. An official translation of the text is awaited.

The document said, “Insufficient effective demand stands out… Agricultural and rural modernization lags relatively. Employment and resident income growth face greater pressure, and livelihood security has weak points. Changes in population structure pose new questions for economic development and social governance… the tasks of preventing and defusing risks in real estate, local government debt, and small and medium financial institutions are heavy.”

While growth targets have been moderated, they may still be difficult to meet in the face of long-term structural changes affecting the economy. The decades-old export-heavy strategy also faces strain. A report for the think tank Chatham House noted that the plan seemed to offer few surprises and was short on detail. Still, it reiterated that “over the past decade, Chinese policymakers have become increasingly convinced that globalization – once the engine of the country’s meteoric growth – is becoming a source of vulnerability.” Hence, the stress on self-reliance and new technologies as drivers of growth.