美国国家公共电台 NPR China Lavishes Red-Carpet Treatment On Trump As He Arrives For Talks With Xi Jinping

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

President Trump 1 today got the imperial treatment in Beijing's Forbidden City. That's the centuries-old palace complex there. It is Trump's first state visit to China and the third of five stops on his tour of Asia. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing that political pomp is one of several ways China has sought to manage Trump and the challenges he poses to U.S.-China relations.

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ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE 2: The first families of the U.S. and China took in a private Peking opera performance amid the vermilion walls and yellow-tile roofs of the Imperial Palace, a choreographed 3 blend of stagecraft and statecraft designed to highlight the evolving chemistry between presidents Trump and Xi Jinping. At least, that's how Shi Yinhong describes it. He's an international relations expert at People's University in Beijing.

SHI YINHONG: (Speaking Chinese).

KUHN: "China's receiving Trump almost the way the king of Saudi Arabia did," he says, "giving him lots of face, vanities and protocol 4." The relationship between Xi and Trump got off to a rocky start. Trump threatened to upgrade relations with Taiwan and punish China for manipulating the value of its currency. But none of that happened. Cui Liru of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations says that China handle these challenges the right way by doing nothing at all.

CUI LIRU: (Through interpreter) China had to realize that Trump needed to learn about China. And during this learning process, we had to stay cool and patient.

KUHN: It also had to find a channel, he adds, to get through to Trump. They found one in his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who helped to arrange an April summit at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. That channel appears to have outlived its usefulness as Xi and Trump have now met in person twice and spoken by phone nine times. Trump has even praised Xi as a very good man. Meanwhile, Beijing has made some concessions 5 to Trump on trade, for example, increasing imports from the U.S. Tsinghua University professor Chu Shulong argues, though, that these were things that China wanted anyway.

CHU SHULONG: (Speaking Chinese).

KUHN: "China needs to import U.S. agricultural goods, airplanes and other products," he says. Since Trump took office, China has also tightened 6 sanctions on North Korea, reducing trade in oil and coal, halting banking 7 and sending North Korean workers home. And that, says People's University's Shi Yinhong, is about as much as China can or is willing to do for now.

SHI: (Speaking Chinese).

KUHN: "China has nearly exhausted 8 its leverage 9 over North Korea," he says, "and the North is becoming increasingly hostile towards us." The Trump administration, meanwhile, has recently outlined its vision of a U.S. alliance with India and Australia in what it calls a free and open Indo-Pacific region. To China, that sounds like a repackaged Cold War-era policy to contain it. And Chu Shulong notes that U.S. and Chinese navies are bumping into each other with increasing frequency in contested waters of the South China Sea.

CHU: (Speaking Chinese).

KUHN: "Who knows when the two countries warships 10 might get too close or collide," he says, "or make some sort of miscalculation." In the near term, Chu says he's optimistic that Trump and Xi can at least maintain their personal relationship.

CHU: (Speaking Chinese).

KUHN: "But this could all change," he cautions. "Leaders have to put the national interest and their own agenda first and not personal relationships." Chu points out that Trump's predecessor 11, Barack Obama, started out pretty bullish on China too, but by his second term, he largely soured on it. And Trump himself has at times also expressed disappointment with China. People's University's Shi Yinhong is even more pessimistic. He predicts all the diplomatic niceties and chummy atmosphere could just evaporate in about two or three months' time. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.