Rabia İclal Turan
14 May 2026•Update: 14 May 2026
Traveling to Beijing with US President Donald Trump for a high-stakes summit, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described China as both America's top geopolitical challenge and its most important relationship to manage.
"It's both our top political challenge, geopolitically, and it's also the most important relationship for us to manage," Rubio said in an interview with Fox News airing Wednesday but taped earlier this week, accompanying US President Donald Trump to China for a four-day visit.
"It's a big, powerful country. It's going to continue to grow, but we're going to have interests of ours that are going to be in conflict with interests of theirs."
"To avoid wars and maintain peace and stability in the world, we're going to have to manage those," Rubio said.
"There might be some areas of cooperation too, and we want to make sure we don't walk away from those."
Rubio’s remarks came aboard Air Force One en route to Beijing with Trump despite being under Chinese sanctions, in a diplomatic workaround that appeared to hinge on Beijing altering the Chinese spelling of his name.
Trump and Xi are scheduled to hold a two-day summit on Thursday and Friday, with the four-day visit also set to run through Friday.
Trump's trip had initially been planned for April but was delayed due to the US-Israeli war against Iran.
Iran, Hormuz, and China
On tensions with Tehran over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the US-Israeli war on Iran, Rubio said: "It's in (China’s) interest to resolve this."
"We hope to convince them to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they're doing now in the Persian Gulf," he added.
Rubio laid out three reasons the Hormuz crisis runs against China's own interests.
Chinese vessels were already targeted in the Gulf, he said, after a Chinese-owned cargo ship was struck over the weekend.
Asia is more exposed than any other region due to its heavy energy dependence on the strait, he said.
And China's export-driven economy will take a direct hit as global economies weaken and demand for Chinese goods falls, he added.
