In the years since, peace in the western Pacific has often depended on such ambiguities in the liturgy of relations between China, America and Taiwan. Chinese officials have made many more attempts to dilute America’s commitment to help Taiwan defend itself. And successive American presidents have rebuffed them. But as Donald Trump prepares to visit Beijing, China is making a new push to win concessions on Taiwan. And fears are growing in Taipei and Washington that Mr Trump might at some point give ground as part of a broader deal with Xi Jinping, China’s president. At the same time, the war in the Middle East is eroding America’s capacity both to arm Taiwan and to intervene successfully in a conflict with China over the island. American military assets transferred from Asia to the Gulf include an aircraft-carrier strike group, a Marine expeditionary unit, missile- defence equipment and other munitions. The knock-on effects on maintenance and readiness may last for years. Moreover, America and its Middle Eastern allies have depleted their stockpiles of weapons, especially Patriot interceptor missiles. Taiwan, which has bought many of the same American arms, was facing a $32bn delivery backlog before the war. Clearing that may now take even longer. American and Taiwanese officials insist that relations remain strong and arms deliveries on track. They also play down the risk of a Chinese attack in 2027, the deadline that American spies say Mr Xi has set for his armed forces to be able to execute an invasion of Taiwan. Although China continues to probe Taiwan’s defences almost daily, the threat of an actual attack may have diminished in the near term because of a recent purge by Mr Xi of his military high command. He may have been deterred, too, by Mr Trump’s recent displays of AI-enhanced American firepower. Still, anxiety about the future is starting to hit Taiwanese politics in ways that could fundamentally alter the power dynamics of the region. Cheng Li- wun, the new leader of the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s biggest opposition party, is seeking closer ties to China ahead of local elections in November and a presidential poll in 2028. In April she became the first KMT leader in a decade to meet Mr Xi. The KMT and its allies, which control Taiwan’s parliament, are also blocking a $40bn rise in defence spending, mainly for
American arms. Further delay could bump Taiwan to the back of the queue for some critical weapons. That all makes this a precarious moment for the island that produces some 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. When the two leaders last met, in South Korea in October, they barely discussed Taiwan. But in December China grew upset when Mr Trump approved an arms package for the island worth a record $11bn. Since then, Chinese officials have made clear that they want the issue at the top of the agenda in Beijing. In a phone call with Mr Trump in January, Mr Xi said Taiwan was “the most important issue” and that America should handle arms sales to the island “with extreme caution”. Mr Trump then took the unusual step of stating publicly that he had discussed future arms sales to Taiwan directly with Mr Xi. Shortly afterwards it emerged that the White House was delaying a fresh arms package for Taiwan worth about $13bn. America has temporarily delayed such arms sales before summits in the past. But Mr Trump’s remarks suggested that he was actually negotiating with Mr Xi over future arms sales. That would be a violation of Reagan’s commitments back in 1982. Chinese representatives have also been lobbying for Mr Trump to change America’s official public rhetoric on Taiwan. One proposal is for him to say that America “opposes” Taiwanese independence. Its current position is that it “does not support” the island’s independence, implying that America would not object if it happened organically. (Ms Cheng, the KMT leader, has suggested she would not object to such a change.) Recently, Chinese officials and proxies have proposed that Mr Trump say he supports or does not oppose “peaceful re-unification” with China. America’s current policy is that it supports a peaceful resolution, without mentioning a specific outcome such as unification. Da Wei, who studies China’s relations with America at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, says he thinks Mr Trump “got the message” about arms sales during the recent leaders’ phone call. He expects him to approve smaller packages in future and to wait several months before the next one. Otherwise, Mr Xi could cancel a planned visit to America this year, he warns. And he believes there is a realistic chance of Mr Trump saying he
does not oppose “peaceful re-unification”. Although only a small change from China’s perspective, that could lead to more significant ones on Taiwan’s status and future, he says. That is what worries Taiwan’s government. Such wrangling over a few words may seem precious. But the careful use, and the tweaking, of diplomatic language around Taiwan has long been a sensitive point on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The island’s current president, Lai Ching-te, asserts that Taiwan is already an independent sovereign nation and its future can be decided only by its own people. His government has stepped up efforts to lobby Mr Trump through its supporters in the American government and Congress. But it fears that such influence is dwindling and that Mr Trump cares little for the island. In its view, any rhetorical concession would imply that Taiwan is up for negotiation, further undermining public morale there, while helping Mr Xi’s strategy of bringing the KMT back to power. And any delay or scaling back of American arms sales after the summit would embolden China and set back Taiwan’s efforts to modernise its armed forces. No one involved expects a sea change from this round of talks. Chinese officials have dropped earlier efforts to negotiate a fourth bilateral communiqué. Instead, they appear to be trying to get Mr Trump to make concessions on Taiwan without a written agreement. And if China doesn’t achieve that this time, it is likely to keep making Taiwan the dominant issue ahead of the three other planned meetings between Mr Trump and Mr Xi in 2026. That, in effect, could amount to a “shadow deal” on Taiwan by giving Mr Trump an added incentive to avoid saying or doing things that Mr Xi considers provocative, says Henrietta Levin, who worked on China for the Biden administration. For America, strategic ambiguity over Taiwan has long deterred China. Feckless ambiguity does not hold the same promise.■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//briefing/2026/05/07/china-is-pushing-donald-trump-for- concessions-on-taiwan
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City parenting has become a financial flex The wealthiest neighbourhoods are defying suburbanisation May 7th 2026 NOT LONG ago Wicker Park, a neighbourhood on the north-west side of Chicago, was among America’s hippest neighbourhoods. On summer weekends young people with weird haircuts mobbed nightclubs. Vintage stores did a roaring trade in faded T-shirts from the 1980s. A few Puerto Rican restaurants, remnants of a poorer neighbourhood, sat uneasily alongside the new cafés serving cronuts and unlimited mimosas. Walk through Wicker Park these days and it feels a little different. It is still gentrified, more so if anything. The vintage stores have not gone away. But the new crowd is rather younger. Nursery workers lead gaggles of toddlers in bright yellow vests around the streets. On the 606, a park built along a former railway track, almost everyone seems to be pushing an expensive
pram or carrying a child on a bicycle. At weekends a clutch of craft-brewery tap rooms fills up with fathers. A new private school recently opened and a billboard advertises a clever new type of child car seat. Cities across America are losing children fast. Across Chicago, between 2010 and 2024, according to census-bureau data, the total population aged under 18 declined by 22%. In Los Angeles the figure was 23% and in New York, 12%. And yet in the country’s richest, densest cities, there is one group noticeably defying the trend: wealthier white families. In Chicago the population of non-Hispanic white children grew by 6% from 2010 to 2024, faster than the white population grew overall. In Washington, DC, it rose by a truly remarkable 62%. Their parents are professionals who grew up in boring suburbs and do not want their kids to.
The change is most concentrated in central neighbourhoods in what Ness Sandoval, a sociologist at St Louis University, calls “winner takes all” cities, like New York, Chicago or San Francisco. Good examples include Park Slope in Brooklyn, Mar Vista in Los Angeles and Bernal Heights in San Francisco. Across Brooklyn the population of white children grew by 13% from 2010 to 2024. They now make up more than two-fifths of the total, up from a third in 2010. In Wicker Park’s two zipcodes, the number of white children increased by 39% and 94%. Race is not a perfect proxy for income. But you only have to walk around, swerving Uppababy prams ($899 plus tax) carrying infants in Patagonia coats ($99 plus tax), to know these are wealthy families. In Brooklyn in 2010 families earning less than $10,000 outnumbered those earning over $200,000. By 2024 those on $200,000 outnumbered them by almost two to one. In San Francisco private-school enrolment rose by 47% from 2010 to 2024.