It’s just a superficial bromance between Trump and Xi

Yesterday, U.S. President Donald Trump gave Chinese leader Xi Jinping a lavish welcome at the White House with full honors. A few hours earlier, images of U.S. military personnel laying out the red carpet while practically lying on the ground, just before the head of the Chinese Communist Party descended the steps of his zhuanji, the ‘special’ aircraft dedicated to the leader’s travels, about which very little is known (officially, it is a commercial Air China aircraft that has been temporarily converted), were already enough to galvanise nationalists in the People’s Republic regarding the balance of power between America and China. The Chinese delegation, comprising Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan, as well as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Cai Qi – the man who safeguards Xi’s leadership – and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, spent the night at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, and yesterday, early in the morning, the state visit began – the Chinese leader’s first in eleven years. During the two leaders’ press statements – coverage of which was entrusted solely to the White House’s official TV channel, as all American broadcasters refused to cover the event live due to the ban on CNN, Politico and MSNBC – Senator Marco Rubio, seated opposite Wang, appeared to be the only one feeling uncomfortable. He is the most prominent representative of the Republican hawks on China, who has been forced to follow the mercurial Trump in the rapprochement with Beijing (yesterday he described it as ‘strategic stability’): he must not have appreciated such pomposity in the welcome given to the Chinese leader, and even less so the flypast by American B-2 strategic bombers, at a time when the press has revealed that, whilst in transit from Australia across the Pacific, certain sensitive components of the F-35 fighter jets destined for repairs in the United States this summer were diverted to Hong Kong.

In Washington, everyone – Republicans and Democrats alike – knows that China is an autocratic power that cannot be trusted, one that continues to spy on America, steal its technology, support its enemies and the enemies of the democratic order, engage in unfair competition, and dictate the rules of a new global order it seeks to lead. And yet yesterday Trump rolled out the red carpet and did his utmost to restrain himself; even in his public statements he was strangely formal – according to many observers, his most trusted advisers would have briefed him on the importance of protocol, which is of paramount importance to Chinese delegations. He spoke of a balanced trade relationship and of great opportunities ‘for American farmers and ranchers’.

It is now clear that Trump is determined to turn his relationship with Xi Jinping into a mutually beneficial one during the two years he has left in the White House. The Chinese leader appears to agree to a stand-off in relations, provided it is on an equal footing. “China and the United States,” Xi said in front of Trump, “as two major powers, have everything to gain from cooperation and everything to lose from confrontation. Our two militaries should maintain regular dialogue and improve mechanisms for communication and crisis prevention.” Only in this way, Xi said, “can we overcome the Thucydides’ Trap”, referring for the second time to the phenomenon described by the Greek historian concerning the tensions that arise when an emerging power challenges the dominance of an established power.

The thaw in relations was made explicit yesterday with the announcement of the arrival of two giant pandas at Atlanta Zoo; whilst this may seem like frivolous news, it is anything but, given the rigid protocol of Chinese ‘panda diplomacy’. Between 2023 and 2024, at the height of tensions with the Biden Administration over the Chinese spy balloon shot down by the Americans and in the wake of closer ties with Taiwan – Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei, in Asia, marks a turning point – the Chinese pandas, which are owned by the Chinese government and are therefore always ‘on loan’, had disappeared from American zoos.

Yet this atmosphere of rapprochement and forced détente at the White House was not felt outside the inner circle of the world’s two most powerful leaders. Some journalists have reported moments of tension between Chinese photographers and American security services. But it is above all out on the streets of Washington that, since yesterday, there have been reports of considerable tension between groups of demonstrators protesting against the Chinese Communist Party (Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, democracy activists) and the thugs of the United Front. These informal security groups recruit associations and students to organise pro-China demonstrations in return for payment (in November 2023, at the APEC summit in San Francisco, hundreds of people were brought in by bus from across the country for demonstrations in support of Xi; there, too, there were attacks on those who were protesting).

There have been a number of clashes; images have circulated of Chinese civilians with their faces covered manning the streets along the route the Chinese delegation’s motorcade was due to take, and according to CNN, the White House has been forced to step up security around the most sensitive areas. All this to ensure Xi feels at ease at one of the most important summits of this historic period.

Without ever mentioning the content – only the photographers were allowed a brief glimpse inside the Oval Office, where the closed-door talks between the delegations were about to begin. Just before the doors were closed, Trump joked – but not entirely in jest – that Chinese journalists are friendlier than my own.