Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to international shipping, the White House confirmed, as the two leaders held their first face-to-face summit in Beijing on Thursday since Trump returned to office — a meeting that has placed the global energy crisis squarely at the centre of United States-China relations.
The two leaders discussed the “Middle East situation” during their high-stakes talks at the Great Hall of the People, according to Chinese state media, with Xinhua reporting that Trump and Xi exchanged views on major international and regional issues including the ongoing Iran conflict.
The convergence on Hormuz did not emerge overnight. The State Department confirmed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had agreed in an April phone call that no country or organisation can be allowed to charge tolls to pass through international waterways like the Strait of Hormuz. That statement, made public ahead of this week’s summit, marked a significant alignment between Washington and Beijing on the waterway’s legal status, even as the two powers have clashed sharply on how to resolve the underlying conflict.
Xi had earlier broken his silence on the strait in a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on April 21, saying it should “remain open for normal passage,” without singling out either Iran or the US blockade. The remarks were his first direct public statement on the waterway’s shutdown since the war began.
The summit in Beijing — Trump’s first visit to China since 2017 and the first by any US president since that year — has been shaped in large part by the energy crisis stemming from the conflict. About half of China’s crude oil imports come from the Middle East, and disruptions in the Gulf have left commercial shipping vulnerable to attacks and delays. China is also the world’s largest purchaser of Iranian oil, giving Beijing a unique channel of influence over Tehran that Washington has been pressing it to use.
Washington understands it may need Beijing’s help to nudge Iran back to the negotiating table, but is also aware that directly seeking Chinese support could give Beijing the upper hand in bilateral relations, according to analysts at the International Crisis Group.
The Iran file has proven among the most difficult threads to untangle ahead of the summit. Trump rejected Iran’s counterproposal to end the war as “totally unacceptable” just days before the Beijing meeting, while Tehran vowed to “never bow,” prolonging a standoff that has choked the Strait of Hormuz and roiled global energy markets. Iran has demanded that the US lift its naval blockade as a precondition for fully reopening the strait, while Washington insists Tehran must first agree to a verifiable rollback of its nuclear programme.
Trump avoided directly mentioning the Iran war at the summit, though it has loomed over his visit and caused it to be postponed by six weeks. When reporters asked him how the talks went, the US president simply described them as “great.” The closed-door session lasted roughly two hours and 15 minutes, after which the two leaders toured Beijing’s historic Temple of Heaven.
Taiwan dominated the Chinese readout of the meeting. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Xi stressed to Trump that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations. Xi also told Trump that “a stable bilateral relationship is good for the world” and that the two nations “should be partners, not rivals.”
On trade, Xi said the two sides had reached an “overall balanced and positive outcome,” urging both sides to safeguard the “hard-won positive momentum.”
The Hormuz question remains far from resolved. A US military initiative to reopen the strait by force was short-lived, ending in less than 48 hours without significantly increasing traffic through the passage. China has meanwhile moved nearly 600,000 barrels per day of US crude oil onto tankers bound for China in April 2026, as the disruption in the Middle East has pushed Beijing to diversify its energy procurement.
Whether the Xi-Trump agreement on the principle of free passage translates into concrete Chinese pressure on Tehran remains the central question — one with direct consequences for oil markets, global trade, and the broader trajectory of the Iran war.
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