CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Trump’s State Visit to Beijing and the New Cold War on Asia

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

From Beijing this week, the first US state visit to China in nine years is being staged for the world to see. The Great Hall of the People is open to Donald Trump, who has traveled with eighteen US executives—Apple, Tesla, BlackRock, Boeing, and Nvidia among them. A state banquet on Thursday, followed by tea and lunch on Friday.

On the streets of Beijing, ‘the Beast‘ has been securing the motorcade route since last week, flown in by C-17 ahead of Trump’s arrival to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The international mainstream press is calling this a thaw between Washington and Beijing. Trump’s actions seem to speak otherwise.

Encountering a Different China

The last US state visit to Chinese soil was Trump’s own, in November 2017—at the start of the US-imposed trade war that would deepen under Biden and intensify in his second presidency. The China that received him then was still learning to respond to the aggressions. The China that receives him now has spent nine years diversifying its export markets, building supply chain autonomy, developing the technological leverage to push back, while turning towards Global South countries. Trump’s failed tariff war against China ended up hurting its own economy and people more than China’s, and Beijing’s export controls on rare earth elements ultimately forced Trump to back down. The eighteen US executives in the delegation, including Tim Cook, Elon Musk and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, have come because their companies cannot do without the Chinese market. The economic instruments of US containment have not produced the result Washington wanted.

Since 28 February, the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran—which postponed this........

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