The ‘Rashomon effect’ of the US-China trade negotiations expose the different universes that the envoys and their nations live in

Reports about who “broke the deal” over the past week seem to have been filed from two different universes

Starkly different interpretations of the same event, known as the ‘Rashomon effect,’ though not unusual, are astonishing to see after a year of talks

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US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping during a joint press conference at Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 9, 2017. Photo: AP

Published: 3:03pm, 9 May 2019Updated: 3:03pm, 9 May 2019

Have US and Chinese trade negotiators been meeting with each other in recent months, or with bands of convincing impostors?

You almost have to ask the question, because media reports about who “broke the deal” over the past week seem to have been filed from two different universes.

In a Reuters report published Wednesday and attributed principally to three US government sources, the Chinese had been on the brink of an unconditional surrender before trying to wriggle out of it at the last minute.

A nearly 150-page, seven-chapter draft had included binding legal language to change its legislation on intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, competition policy, currency manipulation and access to financial services, Reuters reported, alongside an enforcement regime similar to those imposed on troublesome countries like North Korea and Iran. Beijing tried to reverse all that in a series of last-minute edits, according to the report.

That backs up an earlier report by Jenny Leonard, Saleha Mohsin and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg News citing people familiar with the matter saying that the Chinese went back on promises to include changes to its laws in the text of the deal.

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