Chinese on edge over Trump meeting
First sit-down with Xi has potential to shape relations between nations for several years
BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping is a man of protocol. Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is rarely photographed without his back straight, his hair jet black, and his expression a taut half-smile. He’s virtually never quoted beyond scripted exchanges, most in Communist Party jargon. His personal life is hidden in shadows.
President Donald Trump, by contrast, is known as a provocateur, off-the-cuff and unpredictable. So in advance of Xi’s meeting with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this Thursday and Friday — a first for the two leaders — the Chinese government is deeply on edge.
The meeting could set the tone for the next several years of U.S.-China relations and allow the two leaders to square each other up on issues including North Korea and global trade.
For Chinese officials, some of Trump’s previous interactions with foreign leaders may raise red flags. The president reportedly cut short a heated phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“Xi Jinping does not want to be seen as being bullied or embarrassed by President Trump,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing and a former China affairs director on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. “The Chinese are masterful at scripting these kinds of interactions, but Trump cannot be counted on to follow a script.”
Trump, who said during his campaign that China was “raping” the U.S. economically, tweeted on Friday that the meeting “will be a very difficult one” in regard to trade issues. His administration is reportedly preparing a major arms deal with Taiwan, a self-governing island which China considers its sovereign territory.
And last Tuesday, North Korea experts, citing satellite imagery, said that North Korea may be preparing to test another nuclear device, raising the stakes for an already tense showdown over how to handle the isolated nation’s budding nuclear program.
Yet Xi’s greater concerns for the meeting are almost certainly domestic. The Communist party is preparing for a major leadership reshuffle at its 19th Party Congress in November, when Xi is expected to further consolidate power.
Xi will need a strong domestic economy — and considerable political support — to ensure that things go his way. A fallout in U.S.-China relations could jeopardize his ambitions.
“Despite all of the concern and anxiety about the visit in China, I also think there is a high degree of confidence in Beijing,” Haenle said.
Trump’s perceived volatility could play into Xi’s hands. Last year, party leaders named Xi a “core leader” — a rank his predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin failed to achieve — citing an “uncertain external environment,” among other factors.
Trump has signaled that the meeting will have elements of a showdown. During his campaign, he threatened to designate China a currency manipulator and impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports. (He has done neither). On Friday, he signed two executive actions to launch reviews of U.S. trade policy.
“We’re going to get these bad trade deals straightened out,” he said.
China will likely grant Trump a minor economic concession at the summit, experts say, handing the U.S. president a publicityfriendly victory and reassuring the world that its most important bilateral relationship remains intact. Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang told reporters on Friday that “there is indeed a lot we can do on economics and trade.”
Yet major breakthroughs are unlikely, especially on North Korea, which is developing nuclear weapons that may soon be capable of reaching the continental U.S.
In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, Trump said that he could “totally” address North Korean issues without China’s help. “China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t,” he said. “And if they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.”
The summit will carry echoes of an informal summit between Xi and Obama in 2013 at the Sunnylands resort in Rancho Mirage, Calif., where the two men bonded over long walks and a steak dinner. It will also harken back to Trump’s two-day meeting in February with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago, where they played a round of golf.
For all the differences between the two men, there are ways in which they may be simpatico.
“There are some shared personal characteristics between the Trump administration and the Chinese government,” said Elizabeth Economy, China expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They both have a desire to rely on a small circle of advisers. They reach around the political elites in an attempt to communicate directly with the people to foster populism.”
She and other analysts also point to Trump’s disinterest in pushing a human rights agenda.
“He has a value-free version of how you interact with other leaders that the Chinese could find quite welcome,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York