The Pageantry and Flattery of Donald Trump’s Visit to China
In 1972, when Richard Nixon became the first American President to visit China, he was preoccupied with more than making diplomatic history. He wanted to ease his way out of an unpopular war in Vietnam and to burnish his image with scenes of statesmanship. As his aides plotted TV coverage that might impress audiences at home, they suggested that the First Lady emerge from Air Force One wearing a bright-red overcoat, to stand out against the drabness of Communist Beijing.
The Chinese side made its own preparations. Mao Zedong’s lieutenants, perhaps wary that they would appear fawning, staged an airport reception that was “perfunctory by Chinese standards,” Margaret MacMillan wrote in “Nixon and Mao,” a history of the visit. They also set about exploiting the President’s eagerness for a deal. As Patricia Kim, an expert on China’s foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, told me recently, “Chinese leaders tend to press hardest when they sense advantage.” In return for opening a new relationship, they persuaded Nixon to reduce support for their rivals in Taiwan. One American observer declared, “They got Taiwan; we got egg rolls.”
On Thursday, Donald Trump’s limousine set out from the Four Seasons Hotel in Beijing, heading to a summit with Mao’s political descendant, Xi Jinping. A half century after Nixon’s visit opened the way to a commercial renaissance, the Chinese capital is largely unrecognizable. Trump’s limousine swept past miles of malls and office towers and residential skyscrapers before pulling up to the vast granite face of the Great Hall of the People, where Xi was waiting on a red carpet. In the nineteen-eighties, the C.I.A. commissioned a classified handbook titled “Chinese Political Negotiating Behavior,” which warned readers to expect that their hosts would “manage the ambience so as to maximize the sense of gratitude, dependence, awe, and helplessness.” The handbook offered blunt advice: “Resist the flattery.”
Trump is less circumspect. Even though his last visit to Beijing was in 2017, he has still been reminiscing that Xi “treated me so well.” Addressing an audience in February, he gushed, “I never saw so many soldiers, all the same height, exactly the same height within a quarter of an inch.” Trump has often spoken of Xi in tones of Presidential envy; though he has occasionally said he can “do anything I want” about foreign policy and military deployments, he has often collided with limits that do not trouble his Chinese counterpart, including a free press, independent courts, and, during his years out of office, criminal prosecutions.
When Trump returned to Beijing, the lineup of soldiers was on hand again, along with a twenty-one-gun salute, a military band, a crowd of children who jumped and waved flowers, and a synchronized phalanx of female troops in blue, white, and black uniforms. For nearly twenty minutes, Trump and Xi watched the performance, gesticulating and exchanging comments. On state TV, a scholar affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs observed that the visit was off to an encouraging start: “The two countries’ leaders both have smiles on their faces.”
For a time, it had seemed uncertain that the summit would happen at all. In March, Trump postponed it, citing the need to focus on resolving the war in Iran. But, as the conflict dragged on and Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, Trump’s aides felt a growing urgency to fulfill his desire for a trip. (“He has always wanted to go to China and deal-make,” a Republican close to the Trump Administration said.) The talk in Washington and Beijing was that Trump officials had a long list of issues that they hoped to address; they wanted the Chinese government to buy five hundred Boeing airplanes and to enable more purchases from Nvidia, the world’s leading provider of microchips. They hoped to establish joint bodies on trade and investment. Most urgently, Trump wanted China to use its influence with Iran to reopen the Strait. He would have two days in Beijing to get it done.
After the pageantry outside the Great Hall, Xi ushered his guest and his officials into a vast, high-ceilinged conference room. For a long moment, Marco Rubio, who serves as both Secretary of State and national-security adviser, gestured appreciatively at the elaborate decorations overhead. Nobody considered Rubio the lead player; the summit had been largely planned under the direction of the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. Ambassador to China, told me recently that this was an indicative breach of protocol. “Any other summit since 1972 would have been organized by the Secretary of State,” he said. “This is going to be a commercial, trade, economic summit.”
The shift in focus was visible in the makeup of Trump’s entourage. His first Administration was stocked with China hawks, including, at various points, the C.I.A. director Mike Pompeo and the national-security advisers H. R. McMaster and John Bolton. For this trip, Trump featured more than a dozen chief executives, who he suggested were ready to make deals on tech, investment, and trade.
Xi, who speaks in an unhurried rumble, opened by invoking his belief that the world is facing a “once-in-a-century transformation.” To anyone familiar with Xi’s thinking, this was a blunt suggestion that the post-Second World War order dominated by the United States is collapsing. (Trump, listening to a translation through an earpiece, gave no indication that he caught the reference.) Having diminished America’s prospects, Xi arrived at a more collaborative note: “Can we join hands to address global challenges and inject more stability into the world?”
When it was Trump’s turn, he touted the C.E.O.s he had brought with him and praised the pageantry as “an honor like few have ever seen before.” After another handful of sentences, the press was ushered out.
In fairness, most of the press was never there. Other than the Chinese state press, and a small pool of reporters who traditionally accompany American Presidents, many journalists rarely came closer to the action than a conference room several miles away. Most of the news emerged through Sean Hannity, the Fox News personality, who had flown to China aboard Air Force One. Fox broadcast Hannity as he interviewed Rubio and spoke to a succession of others close to the Administration. The coverage seemed fitting in Beijing, where the leaders of an authoritarian government operate at a remove from the public, delivering slogans through the state broadcaster.
By the time Trump and Xi had arrived at their next event, a stroll through the tranquil environs of the Temple of Heaven, where emperors once prayed for good harvests, state media was putting out its first words about the meeting. It reported that Xi’s “most important” message to Trump concerned Taiwan: a warning to use the “utmost caution” so as to avoid “clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.” The White House’s own statement about the meeting made no mention of Taiwan. Instead, it led with a sunnier interpretation: “The two sides discussed ways to enhance economic cooperation between our two countries.”
In Washington, Trump rarely passes reporters without pausing to hold forth. In Beijing, he was less inclined to take questions. He did sit down with Hannity to announce that China had agreed to buy two hundred airplanes. (Attentive observers recalled that the original projection was five hundred; Boeing shares dropped more than four per cent.) Trump also told Hannity that he had pushed China to buy more American agricultural products. “Talked about soybeans for our farmers,” he said, adding, “When you have that many people, they need it.” When asked about discussions of China’s program of industrial espionage, Trump complained that a “60 Minutes” reporter had posed a similar question before he left. He said that he’d responded, “They spy on us, I said, we spy on them, too,” and dismissed the reporter as a “stupid person.”
The festivities were not without moments of cultural friction. The two sides’ security teams fell into at least one dispute, when an American Secret Service officer wanted to bring a weapon into a restricted area. But the incidents paled beside the prospect of transactions. In the evening, Trump returned to the Great Hall of the People for a lavish state banquet, featuring roast duck. (The C.I.A. study of Chinese negotiation cited Henry Kissinger once telling his hosts, “After a dinner of Peking duck I will agree to anything.”) Over dinner, the leaders toasted each other, and Trump invited Xi to the White House later this year. Xi seemed a half step removed; he is not a man prone to displays of clubby kinship, though he has described Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, as his “best friend.”
When Trump left the hotel on the morning of his departure, the pool reporter on duty confessed to colleagues that, in the argot of White House coverage, “Pool did not lay eyes on POTUS.” The motorcade crossed town to Zhongnanhai, a former imperial garden that is now the secretive headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party. Trump was there somewhere, but the pool reporter could convey little more than a message from the White House: “President Trump will be met by His Excellency Xi Jinping,” and the two “will participate in a Friendship photo.”
Eventually, Xi and Trump walked into view of the assembled press, taking in the walled gardens and ornamented roofs. Xi mentioned that he “very rarely” brought other heads of state there, then added, with a chuckle, “For example, Putin has been here.” Trump marvelled at the size of Chinese roses, and Xi promised to give him seeds to plant in the White House garden. “I like this place,” Trump said. “I could get used to this.”
They settled once more in an opulent meeting room, with a vast gold carpet. With Xi beside him, Trump said, “This has been an incredible visit. I think a lot of good has come of it. We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great for both countries.” On the most pressing issue—the war in Iran—Trump suggested, vaguely, that the two leaders “feel very similar” about it. “We want that to end,” he said. “We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. We want the straits open.” But neither he nor Xi gave any indication that China had committed to pressuring Iran. Instead, Trump lingered on praise for his host. He called Xi “a man I respect greatly” and said he’d “become really a friend.”
Before long, Trump was in the air, bound for a refuelling stop in Alaska. On Air Force One, reporters asked about Taiwan. Trump said that he and Xi had discussed arms sales “in great detail,” and he dismissed a decades-old policy that the U.S. would not discuss arms sales to Taiwan with Beijing. “I’ll be making decisions,” he added. “But, you know, I think the last thing we need right now is a war that’s nine thousand five hundred miles away.”
It seemed that the deal China was offering was, if not Taiwan for egg rolls, then something like Taiwan for a modest purchase of aircraft. It is unclear whether Trump took it, but he is surely as concerned as Nixon was with managing his image back home. Before Trump left China, someone evidently drew his attention to Xi’s remarks about American decline. He wrote on Truth Social that it was a reference to the Biden Administration. ♦