Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and more than 20 other American CEOs and business leaders joined U.S. President Donald Trump for a state visit to Beijing. The full roster read like a round-up of the world’s most successful people, all there to back Trump’s mission in China. The cream and wealth of American business and technology were there to emphasize one thing: We are the best in the world at what we do. Now let us do more of it in China.
But if China – or for that matter, the U.S. side – thought that Trump’s trip to China was mostly about securing trade deals, then they at least partially miscalculated. Trump was there to sell a vision: that China and the United States can be genuine partners, grounded on the foundation of friendship between Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Or at least that’s the superficial stance. Trump also knows that Xi is tough, and that the Chinese leader can be merciless. Trump is not fooled, but he is on a mission to turn the China-U.S. relationship from a threat to “strategic stability.”
During his three days in China, Trump was pageanted and praised by the Chinese state in ways that no American president since Nixon has been feted.
In return, they got a version of the American president that was, in some ways, more Chinese than the Chinese themselves.
