China has now put out a White Paper on the "China-U.S. Economic and Trade Consultations." Bloomberg has the English translation here. This is one passage::
The US government accusation of Chinese backtracking is totally groundless. It is common practice for both sides to make new proposals for adjustments to the text and language in ongoing consultations. In the previous more than ten rounds of negotiations, the US administration kept changing its demands. It is reckless to accuse China of “backtracking” while the talks are still under way. Historical experience has proved that any attempt to force a deal through tactics such as smears, undermining and maximum pressure will only spoil the cooperative relationship. Historic opportunities will be missed.
And now here is a response from the U.S. government:
U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Department of Treasury today released the following statement in response to the “White Paper” issued by China on June 2, 2019
...
It is important to note that the impetus for the discussions was China’s long history of unfair trade practices. Our negotiating positions have been consistent throughout these talks, and China back-pedaled on important elements of what the parties had agreed to. One such position was the need for enforceability, a position necessitated by China’s history of making commitments that it fails to keep. But our insistence on detailed and enforceable commitments from the Chinese in no way constitutes a threat to Chinese sovereignty. Rather, the issues discussed are common to trade agreements and are necessary to address the systemic issues that have contributed to persistent and unsustainable trade deficits.
There haven't been any substantive leaks here, so it's not at all clear to me what's really going on behind the scenes. Based on the above statement, though, maybe (although maybe not) we can get a vague sense of one aspect of it.
As I've written about before, the Trump administration seems to be pushing the idea of unilateral decisions about compliance with any U.S.-China trade agreement, and unilateral tariffs as a way to enforce the decisions about non-compliance. I'm not convinced that this approach would work as an enforcement tool, but the administration seems pretty attached to the idea. (If it were me, I would rely on neutral adjudication like that used at the WTO and in FTAs, because it works fairly well. But they are in charge and I'm not.)
I can imagine (but I'm not at all sure and I have no information on this) that the Trump trade folks proposed the unilateral enforcement idea to their Chinese counterparts, who perhaps seemed open to it and then brought it back to the leadership in Beijing. At this stage, maybe there was an assumption that the leadership would approve it. But the leadership rejected the idea, either because they objected to the general principle, or because they didn't like how it was being implemented in this instance.
Or maybe that's not what's going on here at all and I'm misreading this. Regardless of whether a deal is ever reached, I hope that some day we find out a bit more about what exactly was under discussion here related to enforcement and how the conversation about the proposals played out.