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Opinion
Why Trump’s China visit could set a new tone for Sino-US relations
The future of the relationship is likely to be unscripted and messy at times, even full of friction, yet somehow maintaining a rhythm
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Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret) is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University and a China Forum expert.
On the face of it, US President Donald Trump’s China visit can be characterised by five Bs: beef, beans, Boeings, a board of investment and a board of trade. No wonder Trump rated his visit a “12 on a scale of one to 10”. Just the 200 Boeing aircraft China has agreed to buy is worth the presidential visit.
China has achieved no less. Compared with beef, beans and Boeings, the boards of investment and trade that both sides agreed to set up are perhaps more significant. With this institutional framework in place, bilateral economic and trade disputes can be brought under regular supervision and coordination. Reckless moves such as the United States arbitrarily imposing a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese goods should become far less likely.
China has acted as an impeccable host. President Xi Jinping taking Trump on a private tour of the gardens of Zhongnanhai – which serves as Xi’s official residence and the headquarters of China’s top leadership – is special treatment. Trump’s warm remarks about Xi and the Chinese people look to be more than a polite gesture.
Yet the real triumph for China is the visit itself – the first by a US president in nine years; Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden did not visit China at all during his term. For comparison, during the Cold War, after Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the US in 1959, it was eight years before a second Soviet leader, Alexei Kosygin, was invited to visit in 1967. No US president visited the Soviet Union in that time.
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