The world is holding its breath as the summit between President Trump and President Xi approaches.

SINGAPORE – When U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping meet in Beijing on Thursday, they and their teams will finalize outcomes on a potentially wide range of issues.

Topics include trade, technology, rare earth export controls, Taiwan, the Iran war, and artificial intelligence. China’s decision to suspend exports of a wide range of rare earths and related magnets and the ban on semiconductors from Nexperia China disrupted the core supply chains of global automakers and had political and economic repercussions across Europe, Japan and South Korea.

“Virtually everyone has a stake in the outcome of this meeting,” said Chad Bowe, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

It also means that other world leaders and stakeholders are likely to pay close attention, even if they are not present when decisions that may have far-reaching implications for them are made.

Both sides have ratcheted up pressure in the run-up to the summit, with the US accusing China of waging an “industrial-scale” campaign to steal American AI technology, China ordering companies to disobey US oil sanctions on Iran and hosting a visit from Iran’s foreign minister. The future trajectory of the relationship, whether toward cooperation or conflict, will have a major impact on the global economy.

“The whole world will be hoping that the two leaders can reach agreement on at least some issues and find a way to prevent further escalation of tensions on the remaining issues,” Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University, told CNBC. The outcome could have major implications for global trade, geopolitics, and “the very survival of the rules-based order.”

Prasad added that a tense summit could be contentious and prolong economic and geopolitical instability, hampering global trade and growth.

The meeting was originally scheduled for March but was postponed after the United States became embroiled in a war with Iran that caused the most severe energy shock in world history. President Trump has indicated that President Xi Jinping will visit Washington by the end of the year, making it the first visit by a Chinese leader to Washington in 10 years.

The entire week may be eventful. Senior government officials, including Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, will meet in South Korea on Wednesday to discuss economic and trade issues ahead of the Beijing summit.

Gabriel Wildo, managing director at political risk advisory firm Teneo, said Beijing may be aiming to ensure that recent escalations, including U.S. sanctions on Chinese oil companies that buy Iranian crude and Beijing’s unprecedented countermeasures, do not derail a cease-fire agreement reached last year in South Korea.

Some of the issues of concern in different countries and regions are listed below.

Both the United States and China say Taiwan is at the top of their agenda.

Beijing is reportedly pressuring the Trump administration to scale back security commitments and revise official U.S. policy toward the island. China claims the democratically ruled island as its own territory, a claim rejected by Taiwan’s current ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has long criticized U.S. arms sales to Taipei.

This came after President Xi welcomed Zheng Liyun of Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang (Kuomintang), in Beijing last month and told him that China would never accept Taiwan’s independence. The visit later drew criticism from Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-de, who warned that “compromising with the dictatorship will only sacrifice sovereignty and democracy.”

Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program, said a softening of Trump’s rhetoric, even if vague, would be the “most volatile outcome” of the summit.

Glaser said “implicit or explicit deals in which the United States concedes spheres of influence over Taiwan to China” in exchange for concessions in other countries could embolden China to take more aggressive steps to erode Taiwan’s autonomy.

In a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on April 30, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi described Taiwan as the “biggest risk point” in bilateral relations and urged the US to “keep its commitments and make the right choices to open new spaces for China-US cooperation.”

“Both countries understand that it is not in either of their interests to see something destabilizing happen in that part of the world.”

Stephen Olson, senior visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said Southeast Asian governments will closely monitor whether U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods change dramatically compared to their own exports.

“If the level of tariffs on Chinese exports decreases, the business rationale for moving production from China to countries like Vietnam will also decrease,” he said.

The Strait of Hormuz is also a major issue for the region. Southeast Asian countries, which are highly dependent on Gulf oil, are bearing the brunt of the energy shock caused by the Middle East conflict. Singaporean officials have repeatedly warned of economic damage while calling for free passage through the strait.

Energy shortages could be alleviated in the short term if Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi reach an agreement on a joint effort to reopen the strait, but some analysts say such an outcome is still a long way off.

The summit’s success may actually mean a setback for Brussels and Tokyo.

Matt Gertken, chief strategist at BCA Research, said an energy deal in which Beijing could agree to buy more U.S. oil and natural gas could push up global commodity prices. He added that any developments on trade, including China’s commitment to direct investment into the U.S. economy, could take away market share from Japan and Europe.

The summit will also be closely followed in Moscow, where support from China is becoming increasingly important. The last face-to-face meeting between Trump and Xi in October prompted Russian officials to move quickly to reaffirm the Russia-China alliance.

“Russia will be nervous about an overall improvement in U.S.-China relations,” said Dennis Wilder, a former U.S. intelligence official and professor at Georgetown University. Wilder said one outcome of the summit could be a reduction in China’s support for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to visit Beijing next week, days after President Trump leaves office.