Opinion | With friends like Donald Trump, Xi Jinping doesn’t need enemies

Cary Huang says the friendship between the US and Chinese leaders alone isn’t enough to repair US-China relations. And there might not even be a friendship any more, after US Vice-President Mike Pence’s attack on Xi’s policies

Reading Time:3 minutes

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump are seen together in November 2017 in the the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 2:03am, 17 Oct 2018Updated: 2:38am, 17 Oct 2018

In any simmering diplomatic dispute between nations, a leader-to-leader meeting is always the most effective platform to defuse the crisis.

It is all the more so in the case of the United States and China, as many believe that the friendship between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is advantageous to US-China relations. Hopes are high that Trump and Xi might meet at the upcoming G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in late November, despite growing trade tensions.

Just last year, the two leaders seemed to enjoy a warm friendship at their two summits. In April, Xi was treated like an old friend at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Florida, and, in November, Trump was given the imperial treatment during a “state-visit-plus” to Beijing: the Forbidden City was closed to the public to receive Trump.

Pence accuses China of meddling in US elections

Back then, the leaders’ one-on-one meetings had the makings of a bromance. Trump gushed about their “great chemistry”, and Xi sounded upbeat about bilateral relations, saying there were “a thousand reasons to get China-US relations right, and not one single reason to spoil them”. Few doubted that the warmth was indicative of the leaders’ appetite for personal friendship and cooperation between their governments.

Fast-forward to October 4, when in a speech at the Hudson Institute, US Vice-President Mike Pence signalled a fundamental shift in US policy on China: from half a century of engagement following Richard Nixon’s China visit in 1972, back to the containment once championed by cold-war hawks.

Although Pence focused on state-to-state relations, his remarks underscored the increasing divergence in recent years between the leaders and administrations of the US and China.

The speech was the Trump administration’s latest narrative of Beijing, and amply showed how much the pendulum had swung in Washington since Xi came to office in 2012. Pence kept citing “recent” Chinese transgressions to justify why the US should adopt a tougher approach to China.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x