If I could draw, I would draw a cartoon showing Trump as a Chinese peasant kowtowing to Emperor Xi Jinping. The usually imperious Trump appears to be playing the role of eager supplicant in China. And I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Bill Kristol:
In the Great Hall, Xi greeted the American president politely but professionally, calling on the United States and China to be “partners, not adversaries.”
Trump responded much more personally. “I have such respect for China, the job you’ve done. You’re a great leader. I say it to everybody, you’re a great leader. Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it’s true.” Trump also liked the ranks of Chinese children the state assembled to greet him with forced enthusiasm, telling Xi: “I was particularly impressed by those children. They were happy, they were beautiful. Those children were amazing.”
It’s a kowtow, twenty-first century style.
Xi has warmed Trump about Taiwan being “handled poorly” could lead to a dangerous situation. WaPo:
“The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U. S. relations,” Xi said, according to the Foreign Ministry readout. “If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”
In the meeting, Trump did not respond to Xi’s comments about Taiwan and moved on to the next topic without acknowledging them at all, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive closed-door meeting.
A senior administration official said, however, that during the course of the meeting, both sides reiterated their long-stated positions on the issue.
IMO that last bit is a lie. I’m betting Trump and whoever was with him in the meeting didn’t say a word. Compare/contrast to what happened four years ago, when Xi met with President Joe Biden. Phillips P. OBrien:
Signs of decline can be dramatic or they can be small. Dramatic ones include military and strategic failure that make it obvious that a state is no longer the force that it was. Smaller signs can be seen in the use of diplomatic language or tenor of conversation. We are witnessing the latter in a clear and unmistakable way.
To understand this, lets go back to 2022, the last time the American president, Joe Biden in this case, met the Chinese president, the same Xi Jinping who rules today. During that meeting, Xi pressed Biden on the issue of American support for Taiwan. In this instance, Biden pressed back strongly, publicly telling Xi that the use of Chinese military force against Taiwan would be a major mistake. Biden was very direct.
“I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War. I have met many times with Xi Jinping and we were candid and clear with one another across the board. I do not think there is any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan,” he said.
“I made it clear we want to see cross-strait issues to be peacefully resolved and so it never has to come to that. And I’m convinced that he understood what I was saying, I understood what he was saying.”
So Xi pressed Trump the same way he pressed Biden four years ago.
What was Donald Trump’s response? That would be nothing. When asked publicly by the press about Taiwan, Trump looked away and refused to say anything at all, even though he had just answered another question.
Sam Riley at The Independent writes that Trump seems fine with being humiliated.
Already puffed up by hordes of flower and flag-waving children, honour guards and meetings in China’s Great Hall of the People, Trump is unlikely to be offended by the offensive because he doesn’t care about Taiwan, is irritated by past commitments to protect the island, and sees the entire region as part of China’s legitimate sphere of influence.
If China doesn’t invade Taiwan before Trump leaves office, I’m going to be surprised. And I’m betting Xi will do it sooner rather than later, while so much of our military is tied up in the vicinity of Iran.
Paul Krugman has a couple of Trump-in-China posts up now. One is A Failing, Flailing President Supplicates Xi. It begins:
One of Donald Trump’s signature claims is that Joe Biden made America a “laughing stock”, and that he has made us great again and respected around the world.
Yet this is the opposite of the truth. As a result of Trump’s petulant, self-destructive policies, much of the world now holds him and America as a whole in contempt. As the New York Times reported just before Trump’s visit to Beijing, the Chinese now talk routinely about “American decline,” and describe Trump as “an accelerator of American decay.”
China has a lot of its own problems, Krugman writes, but in many ways it is rising, both economically and in geopolitical influence. Under Trump the U.S. is doing just the opposite. In many ways “Trump has vastly weakened America’s geopolitical position — in effect, throwing away whatever cards we had.” And you want to read that part; some of it is eye-popping. But for now I’m skipping to the end.
Thus the formerly strutting Trump is forced to fly to Beijing as a supplicant, hoping that Xi Jinping will offer concessions that will extricate him from the domestic and international trainwreck he has wrought. Yes, Xi might offer some soybean purchases for failing American farmers and some deals to the executives traveling with Trump as a face-saving sop. But rest assured that the Chinese will use Trump’s debilitated status to their ultimate advantage, pressing for concessions on Taiwan while letting Trump bleed away what’s left of U.S. credibility on a failed war.
What a sad and pathetic spectacle.
Krugman also did a video — transcript available — addressing the question of why Elon Musk and a bunch of other CEOs when on this trip. In brief, they aren’t there to do anything good for us. Speaking of Trump, Krugman says, “He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says — in block capitals, of course, this is Trump — BRIBE ME.”
Maybe the biggest humiliation would be if nobody bothered to bribe him.