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Dennis Wilder

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision to speak to US President Donald Trump directly last week, the first such call in four months, spoke volumes about the importance to Xi of finding a way through the morass of Sino-US relations.
Xi’s decision ran counter to the long-standing Chinese diplomatic approach during Sino-US tensions of the Chinese president refusing calls from the US president despite persistent entreaties. The White House had repeatedly predicted a Xi-Trump phone call only to fall silent when it did not materialise.
Xi was almost certainly wary of speaking to Trump because of his track record of embarrassing foreign leaders, but I believe the central reason is rooted in the risk aversion in ties with Washington that has characterised Chinese foreign policy since the normalisation of relations in the 1970s.
When I recently asked a Chinese academic why it is so hard for Xi to pick up the phone, he said that direct leader-to-leader negotiations in a time of crisis were not in the DNA of the Communist Party leadership.
The historical record gives us ample evidence of this. As student protests rocked Beijing in 1989, ultimately ending in military forces suppressing the movement in Tiananmen Square, US president George H.W. Bush repeatedly requested a phone call with China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. The Chinese refused.
Perplexed, Bush asked my China analytic team at the CIA why Deng would not take his call and why, during the crisis, Deng had disappeared from public view. Bush wondered whether he was sick or had been ousted. We explained that we had intelligence he was still in charge but that it was typical of Chinese leaders to “go to ground” during a domestic crisis and not reappear or talk to foreign leaders until they were sure that the situation had stabilised.

Vindicating our analysis, on June 9, 1989, Deng reappeared to speak with the martial law troops in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, offering a long justification for the crackdown. Bush asked again for a phone call but was once again rebuffed.
On June 20, he wrote a secret, personal letter to Deng stating that he believed “with a passion” in the hard-won positive underpinnings of Sino-US relations. Bush lamented that they could not talk directly but asked for Deng’s help in “preserving this relationship”. He sent his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, secretly to Beijing to reinforce the message.
Deng met Scowcroft on July 2 and, although Deng was combative in the meeting, accusing some in the US of seeking to exploit the “counter-revolutionary rebellion”, it did in Scowcroft’s words “keep open the lines of communication”. Deng wanted to be in a position of full control before engaging directly with Bush or his emissaries.

The Chinese government acted similarly during the EP-3 crisis of April 2001. A Chinese F-8 fighter had collided with a US reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace over the South China Sea. The US aircraft landed on Hainan Island, leaving the crew in Chinese hands while the F-8 pilot and aircraft were lost at sea.
US officials tried to contact their counterparts in Beijing but were rebuffed for several days. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice has said she was only able to reach her counterpart one week into the crisis by getting the Argentinians to hand him a mobile phone during a barbecue while Jiang was visiting Buenos Aires.
Bush only spoke to Chinese president Jiang Zemin three months later, after the crew was back home and on the day the aircraft was en route to the US. More recently, Xi refused repeated attempts by US president Joe Biden to engage in a phone conversation until after the Chinese spy balloon incident of early 2023 blew over.


So why did Xi step out of his comfort zone to speak to Trump on June 5 when the trade talks were on the brink of collapse? We can only speculate but it may be an indicator of both confidence and insecurity.
The confidence may stem from the effectiveness of China’s propaganda campaign to demonstrate that it can endure greater pain than can the United States. China is winning the media war on this issue, with most pundits assessing that the Chinese people are prepared to “eat bitterness.” In addition, by making Trump ask repeatedly for the call and then taking it, Xi may have felt he had the upper hand to keep Trump from behaving badly.
But Xi may also worry that a prolonged stand-off, where according to one analysis 16 million Chinese jobs are on the line, may lead to domestic turbulence. Chinese politics remains a black box, evidenced by the fact that we still do not know why so many senior People’s Liberation Army officers have been purged and why Xi has not named new generals to replace the two very senior men he has removed from the powerful Central Military Commission.
Whatever the reason Xi agreed to speak to Trump, the fact that Xi has acted in a manner distinct from Chinese political norms suggests we are in a unique US-China crisis.


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In times of US-China tension, Chinese leaders tend to rebuff calls from their American counterparts. Xi choosing to speak to Trump stands out


In times of US-China tension, Chinese leaders tend to rebuff calls from their American counterparts. Xi choosing to speak to Trump stands out.


Xi Jinping

Donald Trump

United States

Donald Trump’s China policy

Argentina

Deng Xiaoping

Jiang Zemin

Joe Biden

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Why Xi’s decision to talk to Trump during trade crisis speaks volumes

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}In times of US-China tension, Chinese leaders tend to rebuff calls from their American counterparts. Xi choosing to speak to Trump stands out

In times of US-China tension, Chinese leaders tend to rebuff calls from their American counterparts. Xi choosing to speak to Trump stands out