The first visit of the US president to China in 9 years ended with what he had planned: a fragile “peace” between the two major powers of the planet. This is reported by BBC news Ukraine, the PromPolitInform portal reports.
Chinese President Xi Jinping gave Donald Trump a luxurious reception in Beijing, spoke with him as equals and even threatened him.
He did not rush to help America in the fight against its main enemy – Iran, and as soon as Trump flew away, Xi began to prepare to receive another US rival – Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Experts warned that one should not expect specifics from Trump’s visit to China. It is enough that the leaders of the two largest economies and armies of the planet meet and part on good terms.
In the end, that is exactly what happened. Trump and Xi exchanged compliments, and their diplomats announced the results of the closed negotiations.
If you read them without context, it may seem that Trump and Xi spoke without an interpreter and that each heard and understood only himself – so radically different are the presentations of what they talked about in the Chinese and American editions.
The Chinese side claims that Xi discussed with Trump how geopolitics is changing in a changing world (the ornate Chinese presentation of the thesis that America is no longer a hegemon and China is on an equal footing with it), as well as Taiwan.
The Americans insist that Trump discussed how China can help the United States achieve Trump’s goals. Increase Chinese investment in America, buy more oil and gas from the United States, expand access for American companies to the Chinese market and — most importantly — convince Iran to lift the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and abandon the idea of creating a nuclear bomb.
The Americans did not mention Taiwan at all, while Xi immediately made it clear that for communist China the issue of a democratic Chinese island is of paramount importance. Even before the meeting with Trump, Xi raised the stakes and for the first time threatened America with war if something went wrong.
“Xi Jinping stressed that the Taiwan issue is perhaps the most key issue on the bilateral agenda between China and the United States,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry reported. “If this issue is approached incorrectly, the two countries may clash and even enter into conflict.”
Trump did not respond to Xi’s threats in any way, and a little later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that the US position had not changed.
America recognizes the one-China principle and does not support Taiwan independence. China has long sought to have the United States change the wording from “does not support” to “opposes.”
Not to reconcile, but to stall
Let the summit’s results, in the Chinese and American accounts, be read as a report of two different meetings, the main thing is that neither side contradicts the other or is in a hurry to refute its interpretation of what happened, notes Ryan Hass, a former White House special assistant on China issues. He accompanied Barack Obama on several meetings with Xi Jinping in 2014-2016.
“The fact that the parties described the meeting in such different ways indicates that they are deliberately giving each other the opportunity to emphasize their own priorities. Obviously, this is done in order to strengthen the stability in the relationship, which both leaders seek,” writes Hass, now an expert at the American Brookings Institution.
Xi spoke in the same spirit at a banquet with Trump.
“We unanimously believe that the Sino-US relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the modern world, and it needs to be improved, not destroyed. China and the US will benefit from cooperation, and confrontation between us will result in mutual losses, so we should be partners, not rivals,” the Chinese leader said.
China is eager to continue the fragile truce, but is in no hurry to agree on anything concrete with Trump, because Xi is playing the long game, while Trump, first, likes quick results and high-profile “deals” and, second, rarely keeps his word. Third, his presidential term will end in less than three years, and in November he could become a “lame duck” if the Democrats win the midterm elections to Congress.
“Many in China seem to believe that the confrontation with the United States will escalate again after the midterm elections or after Trump leaves. From this perspective, their task is not to reconcile, but to stall for time: to maintain stability while continuing to strengthen China’s long-term position,” says Zoe Liu, a China expert and author of the book “Can the BRICS Undermine the Dollar’s Role in the Global Financial System?”
How Putin Will Agree with Xi
This strategy is bearing fruit. Chinese propaganda presents Xi as a leading world leader, to whom the leaders of the major nuclear powers flock one after another.
First, Trump came to listen to a lecture on Taiwan. And then Xi called on the red the path of Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, which has become a raw material and technological appendage of China.
Xi will probably use Putin’s arrival next week to once again show the world that the United States is no longer China’s puppet. To do this, Xi has specific levers to demonstrate his newly acquired hegemony.
One of them is war. Trump has long been trying to end Russia’s war against Ukraine and his own war with Iran.
China is the main patron and ally of these countries, and without China, Trump has so far failed.
The second is energy. Trump is trying to make America the world’s oil and gas hegemon and wanted to convince Xi to buy more oil and gas from the United States, and not where China is now doing it – in the Middle East and Russia.
China has not made any specific commitments.
And next week, Xi could once again demonstrate his strength to Trump by signing a long-awaited contract with Putin to build the Power of Siberia-2 gas pipeline, promising to buy more gas from Russia rather than the United States, while also helping Putin compensate for lost export revenues to Europe and fund the war in Ukraine.
All of this could upset Trump and lead to a worsening of relations between the United States and China in the coming weeks and months, experts warn. Especially considering that Trump is preparing a new trade war with China — his previous tariffs were declared illegal by his own Supreme Court, and now the White House is trying to introduce new ones, but under a different pretext.
So the truce is more than temporary and fragile, notes Michael Froman, a former senior White House official who, under Barack Obama, was responsible for foreign trade and relations with the G7 and APEC, an association of Asian and American countries.
There are a host of unresolved contradictions between the United States and China — from trade to Taiwan and the nuclear arms race — that Trump and Xi have only swept under the ceremonial red carpet of the Beijing summit.
“Ignoring most of these problems creates the risk of future conflict,” warns Michael Froman. “There is a difference between measured skepticism and complacency. At some point, the key contradictions in US-China relations will inevitably need to be resolved.”
