US midterm elections are looming, and Donald Trump is in trouble. His poll numbers are catastrophic, Republicans may lose states like Texas once considered eternally red, and he’s arguably losing his war with Iran, a country a fraction of the size and power of America.

Trump seemed to take some comfort from his summit with China’s President Xi Jinping last month, despite the lack of concrete takeaways from their meeting – the rituals of power being a security blanket for the 80-year-old US President. But what did Xi make of the meeting, and what advantages does China hope to get from the midterms?

Just how much Beijing understands what’s happening in Washington is never entirely clear. The Chinese leadership’s grasp of US politics is often surprisingly poor, partly because some of its officials can’t fully comprehend the idea of democracy itself. Prejudices and their own experiences in an autocratic system leads them to read elections as shams, and real power as lurking somewhere behind the scenes.

And as much as Republicans in the US like to bash China, it’s Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton, with their focus on human rights issues, who tend to end up as hate figures in the Chinese media. Meanwhile, the idea that a judge might be able to stop the government doing something, or that a legislator doesn’t answer directly to the president, even from the same party, is alien to its rigid hierarchies.

But if there’s one thing you learn in the cutthroat arena of Chinese Communist Party politics, it’s how to tell when an opponent is weak.

There are opportunities for China in the midterms. If Democrats take back the House, and potentially the Senate, as polls suggest, Trump might struggle to get much done outside of issuing increasingly impotent executive orders. This could help Beijing, but Democrats may also be more likely to take up human rights issues Trump has abandoned. Meanwhile, a divided legislature could hold up arms for Taiwan or result in long government shutdowns that further weaken US capabilities.

Trump is on the back foot, both on the global stage and in domestic politics, and his language has become more bombastic as a result – except toward China. Ever since Xi turned the screws over critical minerals last year, forcing a partial climbdown from the US President’s trade war, Trump has spoken of his Chinese counterpart in only admiring terms, at least in public.

That’s not entirely new; Trump has always praised dictators, but he’s been particularly fawning to Xi of late, claiming that the Chinese leader was “strong, vibrant, and fit” and that their meetings were “12 out of 10”. The 73-year-old Xi, meanwhile, requested a special rest room during his recent visit to Washington and declined the chance to have a working lunch.

For Trump, sucking up to Xi may be a practical necessity. In conversations with US defence contractors I’ve heard repeated dismay at how dependent on Chinese critical minerals the US military supply chain remains, and with munitions at new lows thanks to the Iran war, Trump simply can’t afford to alienate China.

He might have asked Xi to stop providing aid to Iran at their meeting, but that wasn’t backed up with any teeth.

China has no interest in bailing Trump out of his own failures, but it also has relatively little ability to affect the upcoming election, and no firm sense of which outcome is better for its own interests.

If Trump somehow holds onto one or both of the House and Senate, he could feel empowered to try to do a bigger deal with China – or find fresh ways to try to impose his will on it. This may be the case either way. Probably Trump doesn’t even know himself yet.

Meanwhile, as hysterical as Western pundits can get over supposed Chinese interference, there’s no evidence it’s ever swayed a US election at any level, from county dogcatcher to president. A recent, often-repeated and completely insane line from both Republican leaders and Silicon Valley is that China is behind the growing opposition to data centres – even as politicians like Texas’ Greg Abbott are changing their own positions to match public opinion.

Chinese propaganda is churned out online at great volume, but it’s scattershot and largely concerned with Beijing’s image. Xi would likely welcome a further weakened Trump, but he’s far more concerned with domestic issues – a still struggling Chinese economy, opportunities and threats from AI and high youth unemployment.

The ideal outcome for China – at least in terms of propaganda – is US electoral disorder.

Any attempt to contest the election results plays right into a long-running theme of Chinese propaganda: democracy leads to division and chaos. Chinese state media already relishes images of fistfights in Taiwan’s parliament and news of mass shootings in the US. Another January 6 or an attempt by Republicans to block Democrats from being seated would get blanket coverage on Chinese news.

The US military has largely dropped the idea, repeated with little evidence for years, that China has been preparing for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027. Xi simply has too many domestic issues to risk his own rule on military gambles or confrontations with the West. So far at least, a distracted and ageing Trump lets Xi get on with the business of ruling his own country. He does this from a position of power – bolstered by ruthless purges and constant crackdowns – that Trump must surely envy.

The midterms won’t change that. China is as prone to political shocks as America – but in jagged, unexpected ways. Ultimately, Xi is far more worried about being undermined at home than he is about anything Trump does.