Get audio access with any FP subscription. Subscribe Now ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

Get audio access with any FP subscription.

ALREADY AN FP SUBSCRIBER? LOGIN

FP’s analysis and reporting

One of the most important outcomes of the recent summit in Washington between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is something we are unlikely to learn soon, if ever.

This has nothing to do with the failure of the delegations to release a joint statement, or even the large discrepancies between each side’s readout of their meetings. Rather, it is about the private estimates that Xi must have made at the conclusion of his visit concerning two related questions: Who, deep down, is Trump, and what does his presidency say about the state of the United States as the world’s incumbent superpower?

One of the most important outcomes of the recent summit in Washington between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is something we are unlikely to learn soon, if ever.

This has nothing to do with the failure of the delegations to release a joint statement, or even the large discrepancies between each side’s readout of their meetings. Rather, it is about the private estimates that Xi must have made at the conclusion of his visit concerning two related questions: Who, deep down, is Trump, and what does his presidency say about the state of the United States as the world’s incumbent superpower?

A column like this is necessarily speculative, so I am going to venture my best guesses. The first is by far the easiest: Trump’s extraordinary unctuousness in giving Xi the red-carpet treatment and flattering him at every turn stands no chance of turning the two men into genuine friends, as Trump often seems to believe.

Like any nation, China has made many errors and miscalculations over the decades, but in the post-Mao era, it generates policies through a disciplined process, whose goal is a sober and rational assessment of China’s—or at least the Chinese Communist Party’s........

© Foreign Policy