Jonathan Fenby
The contrasting US and Chinese presidents hold crucial talks today that could lead to a showdown
They could hardly be more different. One is a buccaneering businessman without any government experience elected to lead the most powerful nation on earth, given to early morning outbursts and unable to put through key elements of his programme. The other is the pure product of the political system in the last major Communist-ruled state in the world, a consummate accumulator of power who is known as the CoE – Chairman of Everything.
Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Florida today is the most important the US President has held in his two-and-a-half months in office. For his Chinese counterpart, it will be the culmination of a steady process of international political and economic expansion aimed at making the People’s Republic the equal of the United States. The president is a flashy, short-term operator who needs quick results. Xi is a self-contained, longterm player who embodies the monolithic party he heads.
Where they come together is in their mutual ambitions for their nations. One wants to “Make American Great Again”, the other to realise the “China Dream”. Whether that sets them on course for a superpower showdown may be the most important global question of our times.
The level of trust between the US and China is at its lowest this century. In a sign of the distance between them, Xi is not staying at the president’s plush Mar-a-Largo resort, where the talks will be held, but at a separate hotel – perhaps, in part, to avoid the danger of being roped into Trumpian glad-handing of other guests. In a sign of how Beijing rates the US, the Chinese leader is tacking the trip on to the end of a visit to Finland rather than undertaking it on its own.
China has been helped significantly by policy switches undertaken by Trump which have seen the US withdrawing from the Pacific Trade Pact, talking of protectionism and putting in question its commitment to the fight against global warming. Such steps have enabled Xi to pose as the great champion of free trade and environmental protection while steadily pushing Chinese interests in East Asia.
Trump came to office pledging to declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in the White House and to launch prohibitive tariffs on imports from the People’s Republic. He has done neither. He was forced to retreat too from his initial assertion that everything in the relationship with Beijing was up for negotiation, including the One China policy, which the Chinese see as essential to their claim to sovereignty over the autonomist island of Taiwan. With the State Department sidelined, the White House team seems split. Ideologues like policy adviser Steve Bannon, who sees war with China as inevitable, or trade hawk Peter Navarro are at odds with pragmatic councillors who acknowledge that the China relationship is scratchy but think both countries should rub along as best they can.
If there is a flashpoint, it will probably come in the form of the most dangerous trouble spot on the planet, especially given Trump’s recent insistence that “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will.”
Beijing is loathe to put strong pressure on its “Little Brother” across the Manchurian border for fear of regime collapse in Pyongyang, anarchy on its border, a flood of refugees and the prospect of an ultimately powerful, unified Korea allied to the US. It is waging a strident campaign against the deployment of a defensive system in South Korea against North Korean missiles whose radars could also penetrate its nuclear force. Most of all, it fears a US attack on the North that would set off retaliation by Kim Jong-un with immense destabilisation for a region that plays a vital role for its own – and the global – economy, dragging in not just the US, China and the Koreas, but also Japan, Russia and Taiwan.
China thinks it is going into the meeting with a strong hand, but Xi will have to work out just what are Trump’s global priorities. The US President, meanwhile, will be seeing how far he can push China. It may be only the first move in the most important chess game on earth.
Jonathan Fenby is author of ‘Will China Dominate the 21st Century’ and the ‘Penguin History of Modern China’