Trump Has Hinted at a Xi Visit. China Is Still Wondering What He Wants.

President Trump fueled new speculation this week about a meeting with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, when he told reporters that Washington needed to be cleaned up to prepare for a summit between the two leaders in the “not too distant future.”

Mr. Trump provided no details, and China has said nothing publicly about any such meeting. The stakes of a visit would be high: Mr. Trump has imposed 20 percent tariffs on China’s shipments to the United States and may order another round next month. China wants to try to head off further escalations in the trade war that would set back its efforts to revive the country’s beleaguered economy, experts say.

But before any summit can take place, China still needs answers to two pressing questions: What does Mr. Trump want? Who can Beijing talk to in Washington whom Mr. Trump might listen to?

To try to answer these questions, China sent scholars to the United States to take part in unofficial diplomatic talks last month with Trump administration officials and American foreign policy experts. China has grown concerned that the officials Beijing has been dealing with at the State Department and the National Security Council, who are outside Mr. Trump’s inner circle, are not conveying their messages to him, some of the scholars said.

“We talk through the diplomatic channel,” said Da Wei, the director of the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who was among the scholars. “That’s the normal channel. But can that reach President Trump? Do those people we talked to really know what President Trump is thinking?”

China has also been publicly signaling its interest in talks. The Chinese commerce minister said this month that he wrote a letter to the U.S. commerce secretary and U.S. trade representative inviting them to meet. And Chinese officials describing Beijing’s efforts to curtail the production of fentanyl last week urged the United States to return to dialogue.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi held a phone call days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January, but high-level communication between China and the United States has been limited ever since. China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke in late January, and Vice Premier He Lifeng talked to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent late last month.

Beijing wants to know what Mr. Trump wants from China in a potential trade deal as well as how he might respond to China’s wish list. China probably wants Mr. Trump to lift the tariffs; loosen restrictions on U.S. technology exports and Chinese investment in the United States; and offer assurances that he will not provoke Beijing over Taiwan, the self-governed island claimed by China.

At the same time, China has been trying to hold firm against the Trump administration. Beijing responded to the tariffs with countermeasures like levies on U.S. agricultural imports that are calibrated to exact some pain, but also leave the door open for future trade negotiations. A Chinese official said Beijing would “fight to the end” in a “tariff war, trade war or any other war” with the United States.

But China also thinks a high-level meeting needs to take place before Mr. Trump has an opportunity to impose more tariffs on Chinese goods, analysts said. Such a move would raise tensions between the two sides to the point where Mr. Xi would look weak for agreeing to come to the table.

“The challenge is, can we move quickly enough before the window of opportunity is closed?” Mr. Da said. “When you see these negative signals sent out without any positive agenda to offset them,” he continued, then “bilateral relations could sour.”

China may see the lack of urgency from the U.S. side for high-level talks as reflecting an effort by Mr. Rubio and Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, to stonewall China. (Both are considered hawks on China.)

“Rubio is not in the mood to do anything” in terms of talks because he considers China a threat, said Wang Dong, executive director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University.

The next month will be critical for U.S.-China relations, analysts say. Mr. Trump may impose a third round of tariffs on Chinese goods unless there are serious talks between senior officials, said Wu Xinbo, the dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, who also attended back-channel talks in the United States last month.

“My impression is that at the moment there is no substantive contact, let alone negotiations” between the two governments, Mr. Wu said.

Mr. Trump’s blunt-force approach to diplomacy, as it were, is a challenge for China’s officials. The American leader has shown a willingness to use economic coercion and strong-arm tactics even on his country’s allies. He considers unpredictability to be his signature weapon. Chinese officials are often focused on protocol, on maintaining control and on ironing out details before summits to avoid surprises or loss of face.

Mr. Trump’s comment on Monday about a visit by Mr. Xi to Washington was probably more an indication of Mr. Trump’s interest in a meeting with the Chinese leader rather than a reflection of any summit that is actually in the works, said Evan Medeiros, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University who served as an Asia adviser to President Barack Obama.

China is likely to want Mr. Trump to come to Beijing, rather than have Mr. Xi travel to the United States, as a matter of pride, Mr. Medeiros said.

Trump officials appear to be concerned that any first moves by Mr. Trump to engage the Chinese or visit Beijing would reward China before officials have made any moves to benefit the United States and could lock the United States into a cycle of drawn out and unproductive negotiations that characterized previous administrations. U.S. officials may also want to put a firmer agenda around any such meeting, to prevent Mr. Trump from impulsively striking a deal with Mr. Xi that could compromise U.S. interests, analysts said.

In the absence of official meetings between the governments, other figures are stepping up to pitch themselves as emissaries. Senator Steve Daines of Montana, who will be visiting China this week to attend a business forum, said on Tuesday on Fox News that he would be “talking with the Chinese leadership about what they can do” about fentanyl. He will also discuss the purchases by China of more American planes, beef, wheat and other products. China has not commented on any meetings with Mr. Daines.

The tougher question for China is what deal, if any, can be made between the countries. Trump administration officials may want China to buy more from the United States, but the challenge is that America doesn’t have that much to sell, from China’s perspective, said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

The United States refuses to sell high-tech products to China, and some officials regard Chinese investment as a threat. China has said any deal would be acceptable only if it is in line with market principles, meaning the United States can’t simply sell China products at a much higher price to meet a target.

For now, Mr. Trump may be biding his time to build leverage in a future negotiation with China, Ms. Sun said, dealing with other trading partners while letting the Chinese “stew in their own juice at the same time.”

Ana Swanson contributed reporting from Washington.