On December 1, 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping had a successful meeting with his American counterpart, President Donald Trump, at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

On December 3, 2018, the SIAS jointly held a seminar on evaluating the Xi-Trump meeting, together with the Shanghai Development Research Foundation (SDRF). Academics and experts from the Shanghai Federation of Social Science Associations (SFSSA), the SDRF, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), Fudan University, the PwC, and the SIAS research staff attended the meeting. Those whom participated agreed that the meeting between the two leaders helped to stabilize current China-US relations, while setting the direction for future development of bilateral ties.