Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to meet US President Donald Trump at the Mar-a-Lago retreat in sunny Palm Beach, Florida, as part of their first summit which starts tomorrow. Trump has faced multiple court injunctions on his executive orders and failed to pass healthcare reforms even in the Republican-dominated Congress. So Trump's team will look to project him as ‘presidential’ in foreign policy. The Chinese side seems focused on avoiding Trump's protocol blunders and is strategising to limit any damage that might arise from the US leader’s impulsive nature and, if possible, introduce a 'reset' in US-China ties.
In his Financial Times interview last week, responding to North Korea's unceasing missile tests, Trump was quoted as saying that “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t.” Then came Trump's usual punchline, “If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.”
Experts are interpreting this to mean unilateral pre-emptive military strikes on North Korea's nuclear installations might be possible. So this will be “the most important conversation” at the Xi-Trump summit, as has already been confirmed by Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN.
But China seems in no position to make any real concession on North Korea. China has its own difficulties with Pyongyang. As its closest ally, China continues to provide it critical food and fuel supplies. But it does so out of compulsions as putting too much pressure on Kim Jong-Un may trigger the collapse of his regime leading immediately to refugees pouring into China. A collapse would also facilitate the unification of the Korean peninsula with US forces shifting up north to China's borders. So, Trump's U-turn on Taiwan is being used by China to claim the two sides may not just evolve a ‘reset’ but even outline a productive framework for their future partnership.
Trump has also repeatedly tweeted and spoken about the South China Sea, but the Chinese, like most people, doubt his interest or understanding of this complex irritant in Sino-US ties. Trump has also proposed to slap a 45 per cent tariff on Chinese imports. His appointments—Peter Navarro, author of Death by China, is the director of his newly-created National Trade Council, and China critic Robert Lighthizer is the new US Trade Representative—surely reflect his limited obsession with recasting US-China business equations. The Chinese therefore see this business baron's overreactions to political contentions on Taiwan, South China Sea or North Korea as nothing more than bargaining chips to recast the US-China economic relationship.
Only last year, Trump raised a storm about China's “greatest theft” and “rape” of America and threatened to revoke the ‘One China’ policy, hoping to use this concession as a bargaining chip. And he followed it up by calling Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen in December 2015, the first such instance since 1979. Beijing, on the other hand, has considered the ‘One China’ policy as an irreversible cardinal principle of US-China rapprochement since the early 1970s when President Richard Nixon visited Beijing, making it the only exception in US history where a serving president visited a country with which the US had no diplomatic ties. But by February, the Chinese successfully managed a fence-mending phone call where Trump conveyed his commitment to the ‘One China’ policy to Xi. This call was reportedly arranged by China's Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai with the help of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, after Cui invited Trump's daughter Ivanka to the Chinese Embassy's Lunar New Year reception where her daughter sang in Mandarin.
Starting with Alibaba chief Jack Ma's January meeting with Trump, where Ma promised to create one million jobs in the US, Chinese companies have unleashed a business blitzkrieg making deals to ensure cash flows, if possible, to the personal kitties of the Trump team. But can China rely on Trump's tweet-shift where he first described his coming summit with Xi as “very difficult” followed by another one welcoming Xi saying he has “great respect for China” and he “would not be at all surprised if we did something that would be very dramatic and good for both countries”?
Believing it would work, Xi is expected to offer big-ticket investments in building back US factories and infrastructure lifelines while paying nominal lip service promising to put more pressure on North Korea and respect rules in the South China Sea. In turn, Trump may be expected to accommodate requests for lowering defence ties with Taiwan as also open closed sectors like IT, energy, robotics, telecommunications, aerospace and ports to Chinese companies making it look like a ‘win-win’—a sentiment underlined by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's preparatory visit to Beijing.
During Trump's February summit with Shinzo Abe, the two leaders had a 19-second handshake at the White House followed by a visit to Mar-a-Lago where they played golf for four hours. But Xi does not play golf and is staying at nearby Eau Palm Beach Resort; he is not likely to have long handshakes or walk by the greens. Trump is outspoken, impatient and prone to angry tweets while Xi is outwardly calm and has no social media presence. Unlike Trump, Xi was born into politics and is aware of Trump's lack of experience and of his, now famous, acrimonious long phone call with Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull. In the face of such contrasts, their shared nationalist and ambitious visions of ‘America First’ and ‘China Dream’ could create friction between these increasingly vocal global rivals.
Swaran Singh Professor, School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi
Email: ssingh@jnu.ac.in