Dealing with Trump
- By Heiko Khoo
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 6, 2017
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A bird's-eye view of the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where President Xi Jinping will meet his US counterpart Donald Trump on Thursday and Friday. [Photo/Xinhua] |
China's President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart Donald Trump will hold their first summit meeting at Trump's estate in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, this week, giving us a chance to see if the American leader has abandoned his anti-Chinese verbal bluster from the presidential campaign.
Then, he accused China of being a currency manipulator and argued that American manufacturing industry had lost millions of jobs to China. The primary focus of Trump's economic and political agenda is summed up by the slogan "America first." This abandons the global political and economic orientation pursued for decades by successive American administrations.
The recent internal conflicts between the president and important sections of the American intelligence community, the courts and even his own Republican Party, have brought the limits of presidential power clearly into focus.
However, Trump's modus operandi is based on his unpredictability and unconventionality. And he needs to sustain this image to retain his support base, which views him as the oracle of the abandoned and forgotten hard-working people of America. He hopes to do this by means of temperamental outbursts and dramatic threats, combined with negotiations, in which, brinkmanship is his trademark style.
Naturally, such brash behavior as his diplomacy-by-Twitter, and losing his cool in front of the world's press, certainly presents a dilemma for China's leadership. For example, Trump's recent statement that China must tame North Korea, otherwise the U.S. will do so unilaterally, may play well with an American audience, but naturally causes alarm in Beijing and Pyongyang.
It helps to reinforce the widespread, but nevertheless, false perception that China somehow controls North Korea, as if it were a puppet state. This idea is clearly nonsense, as Pyongyang has previously carried out provocative missile tests despite Beijing's clear disapproval.
In truth, Pyongyang's regime depends on tension with South Korea and the United States in order to sustain its internal unity. However, it is also true, that within the framework of the North Korea's state and economic structure, China's reform-era economy appears to offer an alternative to the restoration of capitalism. Capitalism would inevitably bring about the unification of Korea, organised by South Korea. And this would represent a geopolitical and military threat to China.
In relation to the economy, the myth of China stealing jobs from America remains a pervasive one, propagated by successive U.S. governments. In fact, during the period when Chinese manufacturing of low-ticket consumer goods for export expanded rapidly, the main beneficiaries of the falling price of such goods were the big American corporations.
In addition, Chinese investments in U.S. Treasury bonds, certainly helped to ameliorate the impact of the Great Recession in 2008 and thereafter. Therefore, China-bashing based on the argument that China has stolen jobs from America or Europe is a one-sided distortion, promoted primarily by the protectionist lobby.
Protectionism and the reversion to nationalism are two powerful trends of our time. They are rooted in the divergent historical backgrounds that shaped national economic structures within the context of global capitalism.
Indeed, it is precisely because the United States remains a relatively self-contained economy, that protectionism and nationalism have assumed such a dominant position in Trump's rhetoric. Of course, this is backed by a global reach allowing the U.S. to exercise power through all manner of extra-economic methods.
The position of the United States has been declining economically vis-a-vis Europe and China for decades. Nevertheless, Europe has proven unable to act as a unified entity and appears to be in a process of disintegration. Therefore, it cannot challenge American global hegemony.
And, although China's rapid and sustained economic growth has amazed the world and permitted it to nudge towards the total GDP of the United States, China remains a nation dominated by its internal development priorities and objectives.
This is because many of the development processes occurring in Europe and the United States over a period of 150 years and more, e.g., industrialization, urbanization, basic infrastructure provision, and adequate public services, remain colossal projects that will continue to dominate the agenda of China's political economy for the next two decades and more.
The Chinese leadership will no doubt try to avoid knee-jerk reactions to the inevitable outbursts that Trump will make, whether at the summit or afterwards. Nevertheless, its long-term vision of development will be forced to take account of the dramatic shift towards the nationalist and protectionist agenda now dominating American policy, and also taking root in other parts of the world.
In these circumstances, China's expertise in development economics and technique will allow it to continue to win "friends and influence people" in many parts of the world, which were previously dominated by American and European interests.
Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn
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