The ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and its impact on global energy markets will loom over Mr. Trump’s Wednesday-through-Friday visit to Beijing and summit with Mr. Xi. The U.S. president had hoped to head into the meeting with control over the oil produced in Venezuela and Iran, two of the largest suppliers to Beijing.

Instead, Mr. Trump may be distracted at the Xi summit by a desire to end the fighting with Iran as soon as possible amid rising dismay among U.S. voters over soaring oil and gasoline prices that have battered his approval ratings. But Mr. Xi also needs the war to end. China relies on Iran for low-cost oil and counts Middle Eastern nations among its largest trading partners. Any disruption in the region affects the Chinese economy, which is already facing challenges.

China has been weathering the reduction in oil shipments from Iran by drawing on oil and gas reserves it had set aside for a potential conflict over Taiwan. What remains to be seen is whether the two leaders will come together and take steps to end the Middle East conflict.

The Navy is rolling out its 30-year plan to bolster American dominance at sea, focusing on rebuilding a stagnant industrial base and creating a lethal fighting force. The fiscal 2027 Shipbuilding Plan calls for $68.5 billion — a nearly 57% increase over last year’s request — and asks Congress for 34 manned warships and five unmanned warfighting platforms by the end of next year.

The plan, posted online Monday, also calls for an additional 122 ships and 63 unmanned systems over the next five years. That includes 10 Virginia-class attack submarines, five Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, seven Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and 23 Medium Landing Ships for the Marine Corps.

Chief of U.S. Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told Threat Status in an exclusive video interview last month the U.S. is currently incapable of building ships faster than China, so he is alternatively pushing a next-generation doctrine of smarter force packaging and autonomous system integration to sustain American naval dominance globally.

Ukraine endured what was reported to be the coldest winter in nearly 20 years while Moscow targeted the country’s energy grid, leaving millions without electricity or heat for extended periods.

But the country has emerged with a stabilized front line and an air defense capable of knocking down the vast majority of incoming Russian drones, Kyiv’s top diplomat said Monday ahead of a European Union meeting in Brussels, citing ongoing support from the West.

“We have a new reality on the battlefield. We stabilized the front, [and] we closed the sky, if you’re talking about drones,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told reporters. “Now we can shoot down 90% of the aerial objects with which Russia attacks us.”

When the Chinese Communist Party demands “respect for China,” it commits a “deliberate conceptual fraud on multiple levels,” according to Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute and an opinion contributor to Threat Status.

“It deceptively implies that the root of tensions in U.S.-Chinese relations lies in American ‘disrespect’ toward China rather than in Beijing’s own conduct and enmity against the U.S. That includes destructive trade practices, massive intellectual property theft, cyberwarfare against U.S. infrastructure, and fentanyl precursor supply chains fueling mass deaths in America,” Mr. Yu writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times.

“There is also the rampant espionage, election and misinformation operations and harassment and transnational repression inside the United States, along with enabling any of the world’s leading anti-American regimes — all pursued with an ideological hostility toward the American political system, all part of a long-term strategy to displace U.S. global leadership,” he writes. “In this sense, the CCP’s demand for ‘mutual respect’ is not mutual at all.”

Beijing’s claims that Taiwan has “always belonged to China” and its “return” is an integral part of the postwar international order are misnomers, according to Gerrit van der Wees, a former Dutch diplomat who teaches the history of Taiwan and U.S. relations with East Asia at George Mason University.

“Taiwan has never been part of the [People’s Republic of China] PRC. From 1895 to 1945, the island was a Japanese colony,” Mr. van der Wees writes in an op-ed for The Times. “Many in Taiwan view the Japanese period as benign and ‘strict but fair,’ certainly in comparison with the corrupt and repressive Chinese Nationalist rule of Chiang Kai-shek.

“Never mind that China, under Mr. Xi, has been trying to undermine the liberal postwar international order by setting up alternative organizations and schemes detrimental to freedom and democracy,” Mr. van der Wees writes. “China’s own repression of Tibet, East Turkestan and Hong Kong is a vivid example.”

• May 13 — The 2026 Iraq Dialogue, Atlantic Council

• May 13 — The Strategic Value of China to South Korea, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• May 14 — Offset Symposium 2026: Scaling Software Advantage Across the Mission, Second Front

• May 15 — Decoding the Trump-Xi Summit: What’s Next for U.S.-China Relations, Stimson Center

• May 18-21 — Special Operations Forces Week 2026, Global SOF Foundation

• May 19 — Environmental Agendas, Geopolitical Ends: Climate Policy and Great Power Competition, Hudson Institute