WASHINGTON — When President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China sit down to talk trade this week at the Group of 20 summit meeting, their negotiations are likely to be framed by a highly charged topic: the White House’s insistence that China routinely steals American technology and intellectual property.

The Trump administration has repeatedly levied accusations of theft at China, invoking a term that offends the Chinese. Mr. Trump regularly says that China has “ripped off” the United States. Last month, Vice President Mike Pence said China’s security agencies had “masterminded the wholesale theft of American technology,” and this week, Larry Kudlow, Mr. Trump’s top economic adviser, said in a G-20 preview that “issues of intellectual property theft must be solved.”

The language employed by the Trump administration sometimes lumps together distinct but related issues, such as the trade deficit the United States runs with China, technology transfer deals negotiated by American companies and espionage intended to advance China’s economic rise.

But it reflects a deep, substantive rift, and the ability of the two countries to deal with it could be the key to whether a trade deal gets done in Buenos Aires. Mr. Trump has already imposed tariffs on more than $200 billion of Chinese goods, largely in response to their approach to appropriating technology, and the rate on those levies could jump to 25 percent next year from the current rate of 10 percent.