The world has awaited this week’s meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping with bated breath. Can a face-to-face encounter – this time at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea – resolve a conflict that has generated increasingly alarming headlines this year?

While most people regard the Sino-American rivalry as a new cold war – a struggle for global pre-eminence, with each side seeking to extend its financial, trade, and military influence to every corner of the world – the truth is that both countries are tightly constrained....