Although reading is difficult for me at this point, I’ve been trying to remain current on President Trump’s trip to China. It saddens me that so much of the commentary might well have been predetermined, written before the president set out. Rather than reading commentary I suggest you read the news reports (such as they are). Here’s CNN’s report on Trump’s reception on his arrival:
President Donald Trump has just landed in Beijing to an arrival ceremony replete with the pomp and pageantry the US president is known to appreciate.
In a show of the importance of the trip, China’s leader Xi Jinping has dispatched a high-level official to lead the welcome delegation — Chinese Vice President Han Zheng.
Han is widely seen as Xi’s envoy for diplomatic events and last year attended Trump’s presidential inauguration. He is a retired member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the Chinese Communist Party’s top-most decision making body.
Other officials on the ground include US Ambassador to China David Perdue, his counterpart Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng, and China’s executive vice minister of foreign affairs, Ma Zhaoxu, according to the White House.
The US president will also be met by 300 Chinese youth in matching blue and white uniforms who marched along the tarmac holding Chinese flags, along with a military honor guard and a military band.
Contrast that with President Obama’s reception nine years ago, as reported at The Guardian:
China’s leaders have been accused of delivering a calculated diplomatic snub to Barack Obama after the US president was not provided with a staircase to leave his plane during his chaotic arrival in Hangzhou before the start of the G20.
Chinese authorities have rolled out the red carpet for leaders including India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, and the British prime minister, Theresa May, who touched down on Sunday morning.
But the leader of the world’s largest economy, who is on his final tour of Asia, was forced to disembark from Air Force One through a little-used exit in the plane’s belly after no rolling staircase was provided when he landed in the eastern Chinese city on Saturday afternoon.
When Obama did find his way on to a red carpet on the tarmac below there were heated altercations between US and Chinese officials, with one Chinese official caught on video shouting: “This is our country! This is our airport!”
President Xi and his advisors know exactly what they are doing and whom they are dealing with. The Chinese president is performing simultaneously for a domestic, an American, and a global audience. Had Xi treated Trump the way Obama was treated in Hangzhou, many observers would have interpreted it as a deliberate signal that Washington was expected to approach Beijing as a supplicant rather than a peer. The risk for Xi in that is that Trump might have arrived at the same conclusion.
What is clear at this point is that both President Xi and President Trump want something. The open questions are what do they want and who wants it more?
I think the better interpretation is that it is well known that Trump is easily influenced by flattery. Anyway, they both want something but we would have been in a better position beef we attacked Iran.
Steve
My guess is that Xi wants US recognition as a superpower and the appropriate level of respect and deference. Trump gets sound bites for domestic consumption.