Tehran, Taiwan, trade … what are the hazards facing Trump on Xi summit tightrope?

If all goes to plan over the next few days – and that is a big if – Donald Trump will arrive in Beijing on Wednesday for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.

The trip will mark the first time a US president has visited China in nearly a decade. The last visit was also made by Trump, during his first term, in 2017.

Back then, Beijing pulled out all the stops. On the three-day trip Trump and his wife, Melania, were treated to a private tour of the Forbidden City, the sprawling palace that housed Chinese emperors for centuries, and sat for a traditional Peking opera performance. The Chinese described it as a “state visit-plus”.

But in the intervening nine years there has been a trade war, a global pandemic, an intensification of concern in Washington about Chinese military activity, and another trade war.

Now, as the president of the world’s biggest superpower prepares to visit his country’s biggest competitor on the global stage, the mood has shifted. Trump’s trip has been delayed by his attack on Iran, a stunning demonstration of the limits of US power, and cut to just two days.

“The idea of an American president going to a summit with our foremost competitor at a time where he has just experienced the most catastrophic strategic debacle in recent memory is going to be a striking moment,” Suzanne Maloney, vice-president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, told reporters on Thursday. “From a US perspective, this absolutely changes the sense of our ascendance at this point in time and what it means for the relationship.”

The optics of the summit will be heavily scrutinised. Trump – less hawkish on China than in his first term – is known to relish the pageantry of diplomacy and often speaks of his personal friendship and trust in Xi, contrasting with his frequently abrasive tone toward traditional US allies. Emulating soft power displays from heads of state including King Charles III, Xi is likely to flatter the US president while subtly highlighting Trump’s weaknesses and asserting his own strengths.

Whatever bonhomie Xi and Trump are able to muster during the 48-hour summit that brings together the men who together control more than 40% of the world’s economic activity, the frictions, heightened by the war in the Middle East, will not be far from the surface.

[Source: The Guardian]