When you spend enough time around experts on China, “China hands”, it starts to become obvious that for the vast majority there is an accepted doctrine, mindset, if you will; of China being superior to the West in just about every way. Whether diplomatic skills, where we were told by Kissinger, “the Chinese play the long game”, or sycophants like Hank Greenberg or Hank Paulson, who just wait for a subject to cross by, and then earnestly explain how China is superior; its hard find a subject from which China hands will not conclude China is just better than us.
President Trump never bought into the China myth, even more deliberately he doesn’t buy into the competence or validity of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For Trump, China is a business opportunity at best, a destroyer of American jobs and a rival for global leadership at its worst. The US President prefers the latter but is prepared to deal with the former.
Trump long ago concluded China was ripping the US off in trade. In 2017 he noted that Xi Jinping wasn’t going to do anything about the trade disparity and so President Trump did what he has always done to a business or political adversary; he punched Xi in the face with unilateral tariffs and a deepening of defense ties with Japan.
In 2025 Donald Trump is back in office, and once again he walked across the school yard, picked out the bully, and smack. We have a new tariff battle between he and Xi Jinping. Just like he has done with the Panama Canal and TikTok, Trump makes no bones about targeting Xi.
Protocol and respect for Chinese tradition are out the door with Trump. Concerns with the workings of the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, are meaningless to President Trump.
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