Reading China
President Xi’s visit was overshadowed, but key
It was certainly useful for President Donald Trump to host Chinese President Xi Jinping in a highly visible visit to Mr. Trump’s personal Mar-a-Lago resort last week, given the importance of good U.S. relations with China. At the same time, the bloom was taken off the rose of the visit by the incandescent cruise missile raid the United States carried out on Syria during the visit, in fact during a dinner Mr. Trump was hosting for the Chinese visitors. Nonetheless, a personal relationship between the two leaders — which will undoubtedly serve a useful purpose down the road — had to have been developing during the time they spent together.
It is, however, not like the old days when President Richard Nixon courted the Chinese to put the wind up the Russians, playing on the intracommunist rivalry between the two. Now, it is pretty much the case that America’s agenda with China and its relations with Russia are on different shelves. If Mr. Trump or anyone else thought that the Xi visit was going to have an impact on what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was able to do in Moscow this week, it does not appear to be the case.
Mr. Tillerson’s time in Moscow, in spite of his previous allegedly favorable relationship with President Vladimir Putin and associates as head of Exxon Mobil, appears to have achieved next to nothing, although it is difficult to see behind the statements and media accounts that emerged from his time there. Russia doesn’t appear to have bitten on U.S. iterations of its positions on Syrian leader Bashar Assad, the apparent use of chemical weapons by the Syrians — perhaps with Russian foreknowledge — at Khan Sheikhoun, or, least of all, the U.S. retaliatory attack last week on the Syrian airfield, also used by the Russians, at Shayrat.
Seeking to enhance the stronger Chinese card, based on Mr. Xi’s visit, Mr. Trump is now seeking to suggest that he was able to exchange a withdrawal of his charge that China has been manipulating its currency to increase its exports’ competitiveness in return for Chinese pressure on North Korea to stop waving around its missiles and nuclear program. In the real world that won’t work. Anyone with a smidgen of knowledge of international finance knows that the Chinese have not, in fact, been fiddling with their currency for a long time now, but have instead been seeking mightily to get it accepted as serious.
The idea that Mr. Trump’s withdrawing his shaky charge on the yuan in return for China’s muscling North Korea to lay off its virtually only asset is unrealistic. A U.S. aircraft carrier battle group is sailing toward the Korean peninsula, with joint exercises scheduled there, including with the Japanese, and a long military exercise involving 200,000 U.S. and South Korean troops is underway in the region, but no one should imagine that North Korea will lay off, or that China will make them lay off their threats.
If Mr. Trump is still thinking in real estate terms, to suppose that the Chinese would make such an exchange would be to think that he can trade a Queens walk-up apartment for half of a Trump Tower. Mr. Xi and China may decide to make some gesture toward North Korea to look responsive, but, in fact, the world still faces, this coming weekend, the prospect of serious trouble in the Korean peninsula with the combination of the big U.S. military exercise, the arrival of the U.S. carrier battle group, impending South Korean presidential elections, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s marking the birthday of his grandfather, the founder of his country. Cross your fingers.