Trump faces an emboldened China in return to Beijing

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BEIJING—When President Trump returns to China nearly a decade after his last visit, he will find a country that is more self-sufficient, militarily assertive and economically insulated from the tools the president has used to stymie it and its ambitions.China has caught up to or surpassed the U.S. in technologies such as batteries, robotics and advanced manufacturing.

Its naval fleet is now the world’s biggest, while its nuclear arsenal keeps growing. It knows it has the capacity to respond to the many threats that Trump issues, with restrictions on rare-earth minerals or with other moves.All of this has altered the balance of power between the U.S.

and China, making it more likely that Beijing digs in on core issues of contention, say analysts and diplomats.Expectations are low for the summit, which will likely include plenty of feel-good atmospherics and possibly some pledges by China to purchase more American products, but not a lot more.It is possible Chinese leader Xi Jinping is overestimating his strength. The country faces deep-rooted economic challenges.

It has struggled to catch up in some of the sectors that matter most, such as semiconductors, as Washington limits Beijing’s access to cutting-edge technologies.But behind the scenes, Beijing feels more emboldened, and more insistent on defending areas it regards as vital to its long-term strategic interests.These include resisting U.S. pressure to relax its grip over global supply chains and fundamentally rebalance trade between the two countries.