China. On North Korea, the two sides agreed to increase cooperation
in pressuring Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programme,
according to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The two leaders also agreed to set up four new dialogue mechanisms,
focusing on diplomacy and security; the economy; law enforcement
and cybersecurity; and social and people-to-people exchanges.
However, as the summit did not result in any concrete achieve-
ments highlighted by the White House, the meeting has led to a sense
of disappointment among some Western analysts. The US strike on
Syria, which took place during the summit, also led many to ques-
tion the significance of the apparently upbeat tone of the Xi-Trump
summit.
A ‘Reset’?
But for Chinese experts, the perception of the meeting was largely
positive. Many consider the event as a success as it injected a certain
level of certainty into the China-US relationship after a long period of
guessing and speculating on future prospects.
With an emphasis on consensus and cooperation, the message of
the summit generally conformed with Xi’s repeated comments that
the nature of the bilateral relationship between the US and China
“should and must not” be conflict-based.
In the past year, China has perceived the rise of Donald Trump
with a wary eye. While some are hopeful that Trump’s alleged “iso-
lationism” and self-claimed pragmatism would overhaul the Obama
administration’s “pivot-to-Asia” policy and lead to a policy more fa-
vourable to China, others were concerned about Trump’s anti-China
rhetoric, including threats to raise tariffs on imports from China and
to designate China as a currency manipulator.
Such worries intensified as Trump included several radical conser-
vatives known for their hawkish stance toward China into his cabi-
net, such as Steve Bannon, who predicted a war between the US and
China in the next decade. Trump threatened to ditch the One China
policy shortly after assuming the presidency, and proposed a major
rise in military spending, causing concerns to peak.
Therefore, the non-confrontational tone of the Xi-Trump summit
proved a serious relief for China. Professor Zheng Yongnian, Director
of the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore,
for example, argued that the message of the summit is that the Trump
administration would neither adopt the highly-ideologically-driven
policy of the Obama administration, nor a containment policy to-
wards China advocated by anti-China figures close to the administra-
tion such as Michael Pillsbury and Peter Navarro.
Zheng even compared the Xi-Trump meeting with the historical
meeting between Mao Zedong and then US president Richard Nixon
in 1972, which marked a U-turn in the US policy towards China and
paved the way for the normalisation of the relationship between the
two countries.
“When Henry Kissinger recalled the meeting between Nixon and
Mao in his memoirs, he said the two leaders did not talk about spe-
cific issues. What they talked about was philosophy, world views and
methodologies, and this is what talks at the highest level should be,”
Zheng told ChinaReport.
Zheng argued that like the meeting between Mao and Nixon,
the Xi-Trump summit can act as a reset for the bilateral relationship
between the two countries, as Trump appears to be willing to take
a pragmatic approach to China. Zheng said that under such an ap-
proach, it is possible for the two countries to engage in what he called
“a grand negotiation,” talks that can address the fundamental direc-
tion of the bilateral relationship.
For Zheng and many other Chinese experts, a major reason behind
the many problems between the two countries is the Obama admin-
istration’s highly ideological-driven policy and highly condescending
stance towards China, which made it very difficult for China to co-
operate with the US.
With a more pragmatic approach, Zheng said the US and ChinaChinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan arrive at
Palm Beach International Airport in Florida, April 6, 2017, for the
first meeting with US President Donald TrumpPhoto by xinhua