Trump Piles on Lavish Welcome for Xi in Hopes of Healing the Growing Rift Between Washington and Beijing

President Trump and First Lady Melania accorded President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, of Communist China, a greeting that far exceeded Mr. Trump’s reception when he arrived in Beijing in May.Mr. Xi did not meet Mr. Trump at the Beijing airport, but Mr. Trump showed Mr. Xi “the most respect” in ordering a lavish ceremony at Joint Base Andrews that included a military honor guard from each service, a 21-gun salute and a fly-past not by fighter planes but by an enormous B1 bomber of the sort that’s flown warning flights off the North Korean coast.The level of greeting symbolized the hope and goodwill surrounding a summit that’s not expected to overcome pressing problems on issues besetting Sino-American relations ranging from trade and tariffs to AI to military security and TaiwanAs Mr. Xi walked down the steps from his Air China plane and stepped onto a red carpet stretching 100 feet to a waiting limousine, however Mr. Trump’s glittering welcome raised questions: was he flattering his Chinese guest in hopes of softening him up for hard bargaining? Or was he groveling before Mr. Xi, paying obeisance that recognized China as gaining ascendancy at America’s expense?The pageantry of the summit goes on Thursday as Mr. and Ms. Trump greet Mr. and Ms. Xi at the White House and wind up the big day with a state dinner featuring flattering toasts that are sure not to reveal the bitterness of the rivalry between America and China from the Indio-Pacific to the middle east and beyond.Just as Mr. Trump sought to set the tone of the summit by greeting Mr. Lee planeside on his arrival, so Mr. Xi reciprocated by conciliatory words belying ambitions for Chinese sovereignty over a wide swath of countries in which it is seeking to gain primary influence if not sovereignty.In an arrival statement handed out on his arrival, Mr. Xi stressed, “China and the United States should be partners, not rivals,” as reported by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua. “The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand,” he said, referring to the rise of China after centuries of humiliation and dominance by western powers before the onset of Communist rule in 1949.In the face of such honeyed words, however, American commentators are predicting that Mr. Xi may gain the upper hand or at least come out the winner in his conversations with Mr. Trump.“Today, as U.S.-Chinese relations spiral into an ever more adversarial state, the longing for another breakthrough delivered by ‘great men’ is especially acute.,” writes the Asia Society director of relations with China, Orville Schell. America and China, he says in an article in Foreign Affairs, “remain locked in a dynamic of strategic ambiguity marked by endless bouts of punitive ‘chokehold’ diplomacy, with each exploiting its control over critical supply chains to pressure the other.”Mr. Schell, former dean of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of numerous books on China, sees both Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi unsuited to bargaining leading to substantive results. Mr. Xi “equates compromise with weakness,” he writes, while Mr. Trump “is so contradictory and impetuous…. that effective diplomacy becomes almost impossible.”Mr. Trump also faces opposition at home for daring to try to form such a close bond with the leader of “one of the world’s most oppressive regimes.”A Republican senator from Mississippi, Roger Wicker, reminded Mr. Trump of Mr. Xi’s record as”a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors and whose massive military arsenal is aimed directly at the United States of America.”

Trump Piles on Lavish Welcome for Xi in Hopes of Healing the Growing Rift Between Washington and Beijing

Trump Piles on Lavish Welcome for Xi in Hopes of Healing the Growing Rift Between Washington and Beijing

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