Will 2026 be the year of G-2?
The idea of G-2 is that a partnership between the US and China can tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges
[AUSTIN] United States President Donald Trump’s biggest overture to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping has not yet received the attention it deserves.
Trump dropped a large hint heading into his first face-to-face meeting with Xi since he returned to the White House.
“The G-2 will be convening shortly,” Trump said in a Truth Social post before meeting Xi in South Korea’s port city of Busan on Oct 30. Emerging 100 minutes later, he rated the encounter as a “12” on a scale from one to 10.
He resurfaced the idea at the weekend. “My G-2 meeting with President Xi of China was a great one for both of our countries. This meeting will lead to everlasting peace and success,” he said in a Nov 1 post on the social media channel he owns.
The idea of G-2 is that a partnership between the US and China – the world’s largest economies and permanent members of the UN Security Council – can address the world’s great economic, security and political problems.
Not an idea popular with US allies, including Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, its resurrection by Trump is raising eyebrows in the US foreign policy establishment.
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It was postulated in 2005 by former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and economist C Fred Bergsten.
Dr Bergsten served as an aide to former president Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Dr Henry Kissinger, who had laid the groundwork for normalising US relations with China in 1972.
Brzezinski advised then President Jimmy Carter, who switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.
The G-2 idea enjoyed some attention among policymakers when the US struggled to recover from the 2008 financial crisis and proponents argued that a partnership between the two major economies could improve global financial resilience.
But China, under then President Hu Jintao, was reluctant. Xi, who took over in 2012, seemed more amenable and pushed for a G-2-like formulation of a “new type of great power relations”. But Barack Obama, then the US president, resisted the idea of parity with China.
Ties worsened in Trump’s first term, when he named China as a strategic adversary, launched a trade war and restricted export of advanced US technology. The Biden presidency maintained and built up alliances, including elevating the Quad grouping of the US with Australia, Japan and India, and Aukus with Australia and Britain.
In response to Trump’s recasting of ties in his second term, Beijing has already offered a cautious embrace.
“The world today faces numerous challenges. China and the US can jointly demonstrate the responsibility of major powers, working together to accomplish more significant, practical and beneficial endeavours for both nations and the world,” said China’s official statement after the Oct 30 meeting.
In 2026, China will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum, while the US will host the Group of 20 summit, the statement carried in People’s Daily noted. “Both sides can offer mutual support to ensure positive outcomes from both summits, thereby contributing to global economic growth and improving global economic governance.”
But China has avoided an explicit reference to G-2, preferring to describe its foreign policy as “multilateralism”, which emphasises working through the UN, World Trade Organisation and other traditional organisations.
Harvard Professor Graham Allison, who has warned about the risks of a US-China conflict in his best-selling book Destined For War: Can America And China Escape Thucydides’ Trap?, has been predicting a “substantially more friendly relationship with China” in Trump’s second term.
Among other factors, Trump’s drive for a positive relationship with China, he says, comes from his understanding that this is a prerequisite for a roaring US economy, which needs to be in place for the Republican Party’s success in the 2026 midterm congressional elections.
In a newly released paper for the Aspen Strategy Group, Allison listed a series of questions aiming to clarify the rapidly evolving US-China relationship, such as: What specific vital interests or objectives does China have that threaten American national interests?
“Was Lee Kuan Yew right in arguing that with reasonable leadership in the two countries, the US and China could find a way to ‘share the Pacific in the 21st century?’” was another question that Allison posed.
Lee had held in interviews with Allison that US-China competition was inevitable, but conflict was not. The US should find ways to work constructively with China in forging a new global order, Lee had said in the course of the interviews published in a 2013 book, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights On China, The United States, And The World.
Danny Russel, a former top diplomat for East Asia who formulated Obama’s rebalancing towards Asia, questions the premise that the US and China could work together.
This is not a G-2 world; it’s rivalry, not global leadership, he said.
“It’s a G-minus-2 world, where the two major powers are unwilling or unable to cooperate on bilateral or global challenges, and the rest of the world is left trying to hedge, arbitrage and stay out of the crossfire,” said Russel, now a distinguished fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
China is preparing to squeeze the Trump administration harder in 2026, he said.
“Busan gave us a look at both Trump’s approach – narrow, tactical, and highly transactional – and Beijing’s tactics – keeping him focused on a few immediate, low-friction issues.
“The Chinese side succeeded in limiting the conversation to short-term reduction of tariffs and export controls, while diverting attention from the deeper structural conflicts that actually define the relationship,” he said.
But Beijing is certain to expand its ambitions for Trump’s 2026 state visit to China, he added.
“They’re betting that by then, the pressure of the midterm elections and the domestic pain from his economic policies will make him more vulnerable and motivated to trade concessions for a ‘win’.”
Russel said the relationship with China would be defined by a policy see-saw. “Over the balance of Trump’s term, expect a relationship with China that toggles between strategic pressure on choke points and tactical de-escalation to avoid being choked.”
A contrarian view is that Trump can tilt at China before the 2026 elections, reverting to his first-term approach, when he blamed China for the US’ ills.
While some analysts favour an accommodation between two great powers, both of which are on the brink of historic transformation, US allies find the idea hard to stomach.
“American allies feel really nervous about the idea of Washington and Beijing alone in a room together making big decisions that did not include them,” said a former senior US government official, speaking on background.
“So American leaders have not used the term out of respect for our allies when it comes to the way that we manage our relationship with China. The use of the term G-2 is a step back from that allies-first approach,” the official said.
A signal US allies are watching keenly is the tone the US strikes on Quad, an implicitly anti-China grouping.
India is due to host the Quad’s annual leaders’ summit in 2025, but amid testiness in Mr Trump’s ties with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, no dates have yet been announced.
While the Quad is idling in neutral, the four democracies still share the same concerns about Chinese assertiveness, Russel said.
“When the pressure rises – or when Trump and Modi patch things up – the leaders’ track will reactivate. Missing one summit doesn’t kill the engine, it just means it’s not in gear.”
The question is whether Trump will lean into the G-2 or the Quad in 2026. THE STRAITS TIMES
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