My Take | Why Beijing loves Donald Trump
- The US president says he loves Xi Jinping, who probably loves him more for compromising the awesome powers of America to contain and fight China
If you didn’t know the context, you might think this was someone describing his marriage.
Some wit in Washington once said that Beijing should thank Trump for making China great again. The latest news from Washington has mostly gone China’s way. There is probably nothing more that China wants than four more years of Trump. So, the impeachment proceedings are perfect, drawn out enough to distract the White House, but not threatening enough to unseat the president. Unless there is to be a bombshell implicating undeniable “high crimes and misdemeanours” that even loyal Republicans can’t ignore, there is simply not enough votes in the US Senate to convict the president.
And in post-truth America, so long as the economy is buoyant, his supporters don’t care about Trump’s alleged incompetence, criminality or instability.
If there is a Washington consensus after the demise of the last Washington Consensus, it is that China is the new global threat. This view is bipartisan and likely to guide US presidents for years to come.