Xi Jinping arrives in Washington on September 23 for a three-day visit that Beijing spent the past week threatening to cancel over a $14 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan. The trip is happening anyway. Washington has been weighing a delay to the sale, not its cancellation, to keep the summit intact, a distinction Beijing's own attendance now confirms. Taiwan's military reported 17 PLA warships operating near the island on September 21, two days before Xi's plane lands. The warships did not stop the summit. Neither did the drones: a shipment of U.S. attack drones previously rejected by another buyer is now headed to Taiwan, part of the same arms pipeline Beijing calls the summit's central obstacle.

A leader who cancels a summit over an arms sale is making a threat he intends to use. A leader who shows up anyway is telling you the threat was never the price of admission, it was a bargaining chip to extract delay on the sale itself. Xi is boarding the plane with the $14 billion package unresolved, which means Beijing has decided a Washington visit is worth more than a shipment it has not stopped. The next test is whether the delayed tranche of that sale, not the summit, becomes the actual concession logged after September 25.