Donald Trump's administration is full of China "hawks" who have spent the first 15 months in office pushing for a tougher rift with Beijing, writes "Politico".
What the US president wants from his trip to China next month, however, is not confrontation, but victory.
It's a goal so important to the president that administration officials have been ordered not to rock the boat with China, especially before the trip. A former Trump official and another person familiar with the dynamics say two officials are implementing the order: Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
The idea is to give Besant and U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer, who has been negotiating with China, maximum opportunity to build on the existing peace between the two countries.
"The American bureaucracy has been heavily beholden to the president's orders not to violate the truce that they are in" since Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea in late October, the former Trump official noted. "They are all walking on thin ice. Bessent is effectively the one who must enforce the truce.
Bessent has focused on achieving economic victories, including offering Beijing a path to a "grand bargain" if it agrees to rebalance its economy—unlike senior officials like White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and Deputy Defense Secretary Elbridge Colby, who have in the past pushed for a more aggressive stance toward China.
Bessent's allies portray the Treasury secretary as a committed hawk, but one who believes impatience is itself a kind of strategic failure. Untangling decades of economic dependence requires patience, not speed, they note.
White House aides say each part of the administration is self-imposing its own China policy to "maintain consistency and discipline." They also present Besant as one of many senior figures, including Greer, with a key role in China policy.
"Every administration official follows a playbook - President Trump's playbook - to carefully play their specific role in carrying out the president's agenda," said White House spokeswoman Kush Desai. "President Trump has consistently called for putting Americans and America first, and the administration has never wavered from that commitment in its dealings with any country, including China."
The president's trip to China in mid-May, which was postponed by about five weeks because of the war with Iran, comes at a precarious time.
The United States has attacked Iran and captured the leader of Venezuela - both countries have close ties with Beijing. The so-called "Donro" doctrine - Trump's updated version of the Monroe Doctrine, aimed at reasserting American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, is both about countering Chinese influence in the region and projecting American power.
"There is clearly a policy of tough - perhaps even aggressive - negotiations but avoiding confrontation," said one of the people familiar with the matter. "That is essential at a time when the economy is under other stressors."
"We are still engaging China, we are not allowing it to continue with its imperialist goals in Asia, but we are doing it in a reasonable and considered way, and it is all part of this cautious detente," he added. "The president is the architect. Bessent is the architect of this detente - which is essential for both countries right now.
Bessent's leadership role points to the president's desire to have a "financial chess game with Beijing," a third person close to the White House explained. "You have to solve the dollars and cents problem first, so you send your dollars and cents guy."
The fact that the China portfolio is handled by the Treasury secretary, not the head of national security, "speaks to how the president views the relationship. "Mostly on trade," a fourth person close to the White House said.
Besent's leadership on China is key to Trump's long-term vision, allies say - one that favors striking a deal with Beijing now while the United States improves its global position and strengthens its military and industrial base for a long-term fight. That approach buys time without giving up ground, the sources said.
"The president has a very clear vision that China is a long-term threat, but in the short term we need to find a way to achieve some kind of trade balance with them that protects our interests and also gives us time to harden ourselves and become more resilient so that we can withstand their economic coercion, and also time to put our military and industrial base in order," explained Alexander Gray, Trump's former chief of staff on the National Security Council.
Greer, a trade lawyer by training, has provided an intellectual roadmap for countering China economically over the long term - a policy known as managed trade. The idea is to strategically wean the United States off its dependence on China for resources critical to national security.
Bessent recently met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in France to prepare for the visit to Beijing, and Greer spoke with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao on the sidelines of the WTO meeting in Cameroon last week.
But the Trump administration’s economic approach has not appealed to everyone, especially those who see Beijing as an adversary who takes advantage of every open door.
"I don’t think the United States is doing everything it should. The dynamic that they seem to fail to grasp is that when Beijing sees an open door, it keeps pushing," the former Trump official said. “So if he senses a lack of resolve and softness on the part of the United States, he tells himself that this is an opportunity, and he keeps pushing.”
Senior Trump officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President J.D. Vance and Colby, before they were officially sworn into office, have said that China poses an imminent threat to the United States.
This kind of rhetoric reflects the evolution of the Republican Party, which views China as an ideological specter that wants to destroy the United States, and the White House is full of those who see it that way.
The president “has clearly appointed a lot of senior people who are much more broadly concerned about China,” said American Compass founder Oren Kass.
Beyond the upper echelons, Kass continued, “there is a much broader range of younger officials who are far bigger hawks than we could have imagined in 2016, and Trump is still right where he was before".