China Briefing | Donald Trump really is Xi Jinping’s friend. The phase one US-China trade deal proves it

Pressure from the US president has helped China in a way its leaders would not want to acknowledge publicly

This deal strengthens the hands of Beijing’s pro-reform officials and kick-starts long-delayed liberalisation nearly 20 years after China joined the WTO

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Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He and US President Donald Trump shake hands after signing “phase one” of the US-China trade agreement in Washington. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:30am, 18 Jan 2020Updated: 3:24pm, 17 Feb 2020

Since Donald Trump became the American president in January 2017, he has frequently called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping “a friend”, even throughout the on-off trade war between the world’s two largest economies over the past 18 months.

At the ceremony on Wednesday when he and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He inked the phase one trade agreement, Trump, true to form, called Xi “a very, very good friend of mine” and promised to visit China “in the not-too-distant future”.

Xi appears to have reciprocated only once in public, calling Trump a “friend” at a forum in Russia in June last year, though the Chinese media failed to report this. Let us hope the rapport between the two leaders will strengthen in their meeting later this year, riding on the latest agreement which should significantly lower trade tensions.

US President Donald Trump has often called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a “friend”, but Xi hasn’t always seemed quite so keen. Photo: Reuters

Indeed, Trump has already proved to be a friend of China in ways that the Chinese leaders and the state media would not want to acknowledge publicly. And I am saying this without any hint of irony.

Following the publication of the details of the agreement, reactions from the international media have been mixed. While they hailed the deal as progress, many news commentators remain sceptical about whether China will meet the target of purchasing US$200 billion more in US goods and services over the next two years or whether the enforcement mechanism will be effective enough to make China compliant.