The Trump-Xi Summit Was Remarkably Banal |
Foreign & Public Diplomacy
You could be forgiven, reading and watching the Chinese press this week, for entirely missing U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing.
On Wednesday, the day that Trump arrived, the front page of the state-run English-language newspaper China Daily was dominated by Chinese President Xi Jinping shaking hands with the president of Tajikistan. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper, the People’s Daily, relegated commentary on the U.S. leader’s trip to Page 3.
You could be forgiven, reading and watching the Chinese press this week, for entirely missing U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing.
On Wednesday, the day that Trump arrived, the front page of the state-run English-language newspaper China Daily was dominated by Chinese President Xi Jinping shaking hands with the president of Tajikistan. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper, the People’s Daily, relegated commentary on the U.S. leader’s trip to Page 3.
Xinwen Lianbo, the most watched nightly news broadcast in China, announced the visit on Monday in 12 seconds of coverage. For comparison, that was followed by a nearly six-minute segment titled “The Integrated Development of the Yangtze River Delta Continues to Achieve New Breakthroughs.” The Trump-Xi meeting got a whole two and a half minutes on Wednesday—in 13th place in the broadcast.
As it turned out, the lack of dramatics on the Chinese side was appropriate. Trump’s visit was a snoozefest. Xi stuck to political banalities, speaking about familiar red lines: Taiwan, democracy and human rights, China’s “path and system,” and China’s “development right,” referring to its ability to move up the global economic ladder........