China is vying with President Trump for the role of diplomatic peacemaker from the Korean peninsula to Southeast Asia.

The People’s Republic has hosted the foreign ministers of Thailand and Cambodia in talks to bring about the lasting peace that seemed possible when Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of in Kuala Lumpur watched the prime ministers of Thailand and Cambodia agree in October to settle differences going back centuries. 

This time it was Communist China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, who  hosted two days of  talks in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province with the foreign ministers of Thailand and Cambodia on ways to enforce a shaky truce that both sides accuse the other of violating.  

“Cambodia and Thailand appreciate China’s strong support in promoting talks between the two countries,” said China’s foreign ministry.  “China will continue to play a constructive role in facilitating the rebuilding of trust and achieving lasting peace between Cambodia and Thailand in the Asian way, with the aim of building a community with a shared future with neighboring countries.”

More importantly, from the viewpoint of America’s immediate interests, President Xi Jinping , China’s party boss, is reportedly planning to host South Korea’s president, Lee  Jae-myung, at Beijing next month in a summit that’s sure to focus on prospects for reconciliation between South and North Korea.

Although Mr. Lee’s visit to China has not yet been announced, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong reports that he is “expected to engage Beijing on security issues, including North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and the enforcement of international sanctions.” The paper based its report on preliminary talks between Chinese and South Korean officials. North Korea, the paper headlined, is “high on the agenda.”

The prospect of Mr. Lee talking to Mr. Xi about North Korea upstages Mr. Trump’s plan to see Mr. Xi in Beijing in April while maneuvering to meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un for the fourth  time.  South Korean officials have said Messrs. Trump and Kim may also meet in the Spring, renewing a relationship that began with their first summit in Singapore in June 2018. 

Mr. Lee is all in favor of Mr. Trump seeing Mr. Kim again since  Mr. Kim has closed off all contacts with the South, but Mr. Xi may be more effective than Mr. Trump in renewing North-South dialogue. Mr. Kim may not be able to ignore pressure from China, the source for most of North Korea’s oil and much of its food.

As Mr. Xi encourages dialogue, the Chinese propaganda machine is making much of China’s role as peacemaker. “China’s diplomacy has sent a clear signal,” says the English-language Chinese state newspaper, Global Times. “Its neighborhood has become an anchor of its foreign policy. 

In a jab at Mr. Trump, not named in the article, the paper boasted that China had been “a stabilizing force at a time when protectionism and geopolitical uncertainty are plaguing the world.” A professor at China Foreign Affairs University, Li Haidong, was quoted as saying China’s neighbors were “ recognizing China as a central engine of regional prosperity despite global economic volatility and the disruption caused by US tariff policies.”

China’s role as peacemaker, however, clearly does not apply to its campaign of intimidation of the island democracy of Taiwan. China has been staging air and naval exercises around the island, fearful that China’s President Lai Ching-te will eventually declare Taiwan’s independence as a separate nation. 

China’s anger  increased this month after Washington agreed to sell more than $11 billion in arms to Taiwan.  While China courts its neighbors, Taiwan’s foreign ministry castigated the latest exercises as proving China to be “the biggest destroyer of peace.”