Trump in Beijing for Summit With Xi Focusing on Iran War, Tariffs, Trade, and Taiwan

President Trump is in Beijing for talks Thursday and Friday with China’s president, Xi Jinping, that may have as much to do with the Iran war as with Chinese-American relations.While he may want to downplay Iran, Mr. Trump, before taking off from Washington, said he and Mr. Xi would have “a long talk about it” but trusts in Mr. Xi’s goodwill. The Chinese president has been silent on the war other than calling for a ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — the goal shared by all sides.The Chinese president is expected to go easy on the American and Israeli role in Iran, from which China imports nearly half its oil. For him, the priority will be deals on trade and tariffs and on seeing if he can persuade Mr. Trump to scale down arms sales to the Free China government on Taiwan, which China never stops claiming as a Chinese province.Mr. Xi may well want to bargain one against the other by refraining from more than pro forma support for Iran while looking for assurances of relatively low tariffs and agreements on exports and imports.The White House has cautioned against high expectations from a summit that may not result in ground-breaking deals, but the Chinese state propaganda machine has previewed the summit in moderate terms.“Only when the bilateral ties between these two countries remain stable and sustainable can global stability and development be guaranteed,” began a commentary in China’s leading English-language newspaper, Global Times. Since Mr. Trump’s last visit to Beijing nine years ago, “China-US relations and the international landscape have undergone significant changes.,” said the paper, but “cooperation between China and the US benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both, has remained unchanged.”The tone of the language from Beijing was engaging enough for Mr. Trump to say that Mr. Xi so far has been “relatively good” and “we have Iran very much under control.”Analysts warned, though, that gentle language may mask China’s intentions. A leading China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Scott Kennedy, is convinced after frequent visits to Beijing that “China’s leadership is genuinely confident about its ability to out-maneuver President Trump and gain the upper hand over the United States on China’s core foreign policy interests.”“Important elements of China’s economy have dramatically improved since President Trump’s last visit,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on the CSIS website. China “has gone from being a tech follower to a peer competitor of the United States.”Also, “China’s success” in getting Mr. Trump, to back down from threats of extremely high tariffs shows the Chinese “that one can successfully resist his pressure by credibly threatening to use coercion. Officials to whom he spoke, he said, knew the acronym TACO for “Trump always chickens out” — that is, fails to make good on his threats.Nonetheless, said an article in Foreign Affairs by two George Washington University faculty members, David Shambaugh and Steven F. Jackson, ”U.S.-Chinese competition will hardly be determined by one meeting.” More importantly, they wrote, “Trump’s actions and policies have created a golden opportunity for Xi and his government not only to advance their own interests but also to truly tilt the global balance of power.”They said, however, that the summit may not result in “a strategic windfall for China.” Many countries, they said, “are hedging, seeking to reduce their vulnerability to both China and the United States.“ Both China and America, they wrote,“may be losing global influence at the same time.”Might the summit result in repeating well-known positions? Asked if Mr. Trump would raise the case of the Hong Kong editor, Jimmy Lai, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson “noted that China has already stated its position on multiple occasions,” according to the Global Times. The meaning was clear: China is not likely to reverse the guilty verdict and lengthy prison sentence for his newspaper’s support of the democracy movement that Chinese authorities repressed tin Hong Kong.

Trump in Beijing for Summit With Xi Focusing on Iran War, Tariffs, Trade, and Taiwan

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