🇺🇸🇨🇳🇹🇼 Xi didn't waste any time in Beijing. Before trade, before Iran, before anything else, he put Taiwan on the table. "The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations," he told Trump. "Handle it well, the relationship holds. Handle it badly, the two countries risk collision or conflict." And Xi had more leverage to say it than he has had in years, partly because of the Iran war, and partly because Trump handed him an opening before the plane even landed in Beijing. On Monday, two days before the summit, Trump told reporters he would discuss U.S. arms sales to Taiwan with Xi. "President Xi would like us not to. And I'll have that discussion." That one sentence broke with the Six Assurances, the decades-old U.S. commitments that date back to Reagan, one of which is a pledge never to consult Beijing on arms sales to Taipei, Taiwan. Even securing that conversation is a win for Xi. Once arms sales to Taipei become a legitimate topic of negotiation between Washington and Beijing, they can be used as a bargaining chip in every future deal. Then add the Iran war on top of that. Since February 28, the U.S. has been pouring military resources into the Middle East. Missile defense systems moved out of South Korea. A rapid-response Marine unit pulled from Japan. Precision munitions being spent at a rate that takes time to replenish. The Council on Foreign Relations published a piece this week asking the question nobody in Washington wants to answer out loud: can the U.S. sustain two high-intensity conflicts simultaneously, one in the Middle East and one in the Taiwan Strait? To be fair the picture cuts both ways. Chinese military equipment didn't perform well in Iran. Chinese-made radar systems sold to Venezuela failed to detect U.S. stealth jets. Beijing is learning from that too, and Rubio said U.S. Taiwan policy is "unchanged" after the meeting. The U.S. National Defense Strategy still commits to a strong denial defense along the First Island Chain. But Xi raised Taiwan first, sharpest, and loudest. And Trump gave him a reason to feel confident doing it two days before they even sat down. Source: CNBC, CFR, CNN, Asia Times, Military. com