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What Xi Actually Thinks of Trump

China’s president has likely concluded that the U.S. under Trump has lost its way.

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 (CCP’s)—interests. Friendship in the normal, personalized sense of the word has little to do with this. This is a rule that I would even extend to the theatrics of bonhomie played out between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose Moscow serves as Beijing’s situational ally.

An admittedly more conjectural thought is that Xi may have found it highly amusing to watch Trump perform his interpretation of what authoritarian leadership consists of. It has become commonplace in U.S. political commentary to say that Trump fantasizes about having kingly powers. How else to interpret his lavish use of gold and his craze for monuments, especially ones that he hopes will bear his name down through the ages? But as Trump escorted Xi around the White House, extolling his helipad and the ballroom under construction, I am tempted to say that Xi must have taken him for a fool. For as much authority as Xi has concentrated in his own hands over the last 13-plus years, almost none of his energy has been consumed in the pursuit of personalized grandiosity.

Xi must also have thought poorly of his counterpart when Trump led him through a pavilion whose gilded walls featured portraits of U.S. presidents. They had been hung in ascending fashion, with Trump’s the highest of all. That is tacky enough by itself, but the Chinese leader stood by, looking as impassive as ever, as Trump paused before the frame devoted to his predecessor, Joe Biden. Instead of a portrait of Biden, it bore a photo of the autopen, the device that Biden often used to sign official acts (as other presidents have before him).

What Trump seemed oblivious to is that domestic politics and international relations at the highest level routinely warrant a careful distinction, as per the venerable U.S. saying about foreign policy that politics stops at the water’s edge. Xi caused waves in October 2022, when he had his predecessor, Hu Jintao, removed in front of a congress of the country’s top CCP officials, a rare sign of internal discord in a country where such things do not often surface in public. But it would be unimaginable for Xi to openly speak ill of any of his predecessors abroad. That is because he, like leaders of most nations with a well-developed sense of statecraft, understands that among his first duties while overseas is to promote a unified image of his country and its system.

At a minimum, Xi must have also felt that Trump was deeply confused when Trump dissed the U.S. media in his presence and expressed ill-concealed envy about the fact that the Chinese media reports what Beijing wants it to. Trump seems to believe that pro-government media coverage is a matter of banning news outlets whose criticism offends him. Xi knows better. The difference between the U.S. and Chinese press regimes is anchored in fundamental differences between democracy and dictatorship.

But there is something more in play: Press freedom in the United States, guaranteed by the Constitution, has long reflected not just legalism, but the deeper national self-assurance of a system that does not fear its own critics. Given this, I found myself wondering whether Xi concluded that he was witnessing not merely a president descending into cartoonishness, but the growing signs of a nation that has lost its way, including the self-confidence that Chinese leaders have long respected and even envied.

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https://archive.ph/5tbcM

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