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View Full Version : China's President Xi gets an awkward front-row seat to U.S. military might




Zippyjuan
04-07-2017, 05:49 PM
Lost in the Syria adventure, Trump met with Chinese leader Xi this week- under normal circumstances that would be a huge headline given how Trump blasted China during the campaign.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-fg-trump-china-20170407-story.html


Chinese President Xi Jinping had just finished a steak dinner with President Trump in a gilded dining room at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when Trump told Xi that dozens of U.S. cruise missiles had just rained down on an airfield in Syria, a fiery display of U.S. military might that formed an awkward backdrop to a summit intended to introduce the leaders of the world’s two largest economies.

Trump had intended to press Xi for trade concessions and urge China to take a more active role in restraining North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, but the high-stakes discussions that began Thursday night and continued Friday were overshadowed by Trump’s muscular response to a poison gas attack blamed on Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Even though China normally opposes any use of U.S. force overseas — and has consistently sided with Russia in vetoing any anti-Syrian resolutions by the U.N. Security Council — the Syria drama may have been a welcome distraction for Xi, who was under pressure at home not to cede too much to the new U.S. president in advance of a major Communist Party leadership meeting in the fall.

Seemingly mindful of Chinese cultural mores, Trump eschewed any hint of boastfulness or the bellicose rhetoric he had employed on the campaign trail toward China, instead paying light-hearted tribute to Xi’s negotiating skills.

"We had a long discussion already. So far, I have gotten nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Trump told reporters after his initial meeting with Xi on Thursday night. “But we have developed a friendship. I can see that. I think, long-term, we are going to have a very, very great relationship.”


Xi’s trip to Florida lasted less than 24 hours and appeared carefully choreographed to limit the number of public interactions he and Trump would have. The two leaders agreed to a 100-day plan to review the trade relationship with China, to increase cooperation on ending North Korea’s nuclear program and concurred that the missile threat from North Korea had reached an urgent stage, according to Cabinet officials who described the meetings.

The two sides also agreed to a series of future meetings to tackle additional economic and security issues as well as U.S. concerns about Chinese cyberattacks. Xi invited Trump to visit China later in the year.


Chinese intelligence services have a sophisticated understanding of U.S. actions, Park said, and would be able to distinguish between Trump’s response to an attack against Syrian civilians using the banned nerve agent sarin and what the U.S.leader might do if threatened by some action by North Korea, which has been regularly test-firing ballistic missiles toward Japan.

But there was one message that the Chinese leader likely received.

“This shows how low a bar there is for the use of military force,” Park said.

dannno
04-07-2017, 05:52 PM
Trump blasted China during the campaign.

Fake news.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrfE9I8_hs

Zippyjuan
04-07-2017, 05:56 PM
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/07/what-trump-calls-strength-china-calls-stupidity-xi-jinping-summit-syria-strikes/


What Trump Calls Strength, China Calls Stupidity

Donald Trump’s Syria strike may have upstaged Xi Jinping’s summit, but Beijing is only too happy to see the United States trap itself again in the Middle East.




Iraq, any Chinese decisionmaker will tell you, “bought us a decade.” Before 9/11, it looked as though the United States was moving to seriously contain China. Afterward, the Asia-Pacific languished as American lives and money bled out in Fallujah and Kandahar. While the United States was mired in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China was building factories, economic alliances, and artificial islands.While the United States was mired in the Middle East and Afghanistan, China was building factories, economic alliances, and artificial islands. As much as the Chinese publicly decry U.S. strategists’ suspicions about China’s rise to the forefront of the global stage, in private they see these concerns as both logical and inevitable — hence the popularity among Chinese international relations theorists of the “Thucydides Trap,” the idea that an emerging power will always clash with the existing hegemon. The United States went into Iraq for no good reason, spent a trillion dollars, and came out with nothing. From the Chinese perspective, they’d just started a chess game when their opponent spotted them a queen.

China will lightly beat the drum about the rights of sovereign states and Western interference — not least to do its duty by its actual ally and neighbor, Russia. It already used one of its relatively rare U.N. Security Council vetoes to block past sanctions on Syria as a signal of good faith to Russia, although it usually relies on Moscow to take the heat and abstains. But a United States that sticks its hand in the bear trap of Syria is a United States with fewer resources to devote to areas and issues that actually matter to China.

liveandletlive
04-07-2017, 06:08 PM
forget Spanish, we better start learning how to speak Chinese.

Jan2017
04-07-2017, 07:14 PM
Front row . . . where (?)

http://i1070.photobucket.com/albums/u494/81502/trumpwarroom01a_zpsjfmuhgey.jpg (http://s1070.photobucket.com/user/81502/media/trumpwarroom01a_zpsjfmuhgey.jpg.html)
Inside the Mar-a-Lago war room: President Trump is briefed on a video link with his advisers and cabinet members around him.

Jan2017
04-07-2017, 09:59 PM
The President's plane landed in Palm Beach just before 3pm.
At 4pm, he OK'd a strike on Assad's army, the White House said.

Bombs were set off during the dinner with Xi and started exploding as the affair was wrapping up.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4390980/White-House-reveals-Trump-s-improvised-war-room.html

NorthCarolinaLiberty
04-07-2017, 10:01 PM
I voted one star "terrible" for a Zip thread.

Low value posting. Junk posting.

nikcers
04-07-2017, 10:04 PM
Low value posting. Junk posting.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to NorthCarolinaLiberty again.
:)