Taiwan: Can Trump and Xi ease Chinese pressure?

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The facts

On September 14, 2026, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs highlighted a sign it considers encouraging*: the increase in high-level foreign delegations received in Taipei in recent weeks. Italy in late August, a Canadian delegation — the first since 1991 —, US officials, and especially three Japanese parliamentary delegations in early September, including a seven-member one led by Senator Haruo Kitamura. For Taipei, these visits carry a political message: the island is not isolated. But this diplomatic gesture contrasts with a much heavier military reality that has been at the heart of the issue for months.

This reality is the Chinese air and naval pressure around Taiwan, which has never been so intense. Japan's defense white paper, published on August 4, 2026, counts over 3,700 Chinese military sorties in the Taiwan Air Defense Identification Zone in 2025, compared to about 970 in 2021 — nearly four times as many in four years. Add to that about 2,600 Chinese naval sorties in the same year. Tokyo concludes that the military balance in the Taiwan Strait is rapidly shifting in favor of Beijing, which has growing advantages in personnel, naval assets, combat aircraft, and long-range missiles.

This climate directly weighs on the most concrete issue of the moment: a $14 billion US arms sale to Taiwan, including advanced interceptor missiles. Ready for presidential approval in early 2026, it was put on hold on May 23, officially to preserve munitions stocks destined for the war in Iran, according to US Navy Assistant Secretary Hung Cao. Three weeks earlier in Beijing, Donald Trump himself called this file a "very good bargaining chip" with China — a phrase that places Taiwan among the possible bargaining chips in a much broader trade and strategic relationship.

On June 8, 2026, the contract remained officially "under review": neither unlocked nor canceled. Since then, no public decision has been made. This administrative status quo has become, almost despite itself, the most readable indicator of what US support for Taiwan is really worth: a suspended contract formally reassures no one and worries no one, but each passing week weighs a little more on Taipei's confidence. Meanwhile, Taiwan continues to invest in its own defense: the Taiwanese Cabinet approved, on August 20, a 2027 defense budget of $35.3 billion, or 3.01% of GDP — an increase that reflects the will not to depend solely on Washington's decisions.

All of this plays out against the backdrop of an already uncertain Trump-Xi relationship. During the first summit between the two leaders on May 14, 2026 in Beijing, Xi Jinping warned that if the Taiwan issue were mishandled, the two countries could "collide, or even come into conflict," tipping their relationship into a perilous situation. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te retorted that Taiwan is the guarantor of the peaceful status quo in the strait, and that it is China that is the real source of regional instability. This exchange in May already sets the lines of tension that will be replayed at the second summit, scheduled for September 24 in Washington.

It is precisely because this second summit is approaching that the question remains open to three distinct outcomes. Direct dialogue between Trump and Xi could lead to concrete gestures of de-escalation, it could change nothing about the pace of incursions, or it could precede a new escalation if either side decides to harden its position just before or just after the meeting. No sign of amphibious mobilization or official Chinese statement to that effect has been detected to date; on the Polymarket prediction market, the implied probability of a Chinese invasion before September 30, 2026 remained below 1% at the time of consultation — a speculative indicator, to be read as such, on a window of only sixteen days that says nothing about the aftermath.