China hands its best friend Donald Trump a win on trade. But Beijing needs to tread carefully - this 'love fest' may not last


The US-China "love fest" in Washington last week defied all expectations. That is how President Donald Trump described the current atmosphere in US-China relations.

There was also Vice-Premier Liu He's birthday wishes to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, whose raison d'Etre is to force Beijing to submit to structural reforms that would weaken the party's grip on power. And the letter from President Xi Jinping that Liu delivered to Trump. (Contents still unknown, but it's safe to assume that the message isn't a middle finger.)


Such were the scenes that played out as Trump, trying to speak above the roar of a quickly expanding impeachment inquiry and FBI arrests of shadowy figures connected to his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, informed the world that he had signed a trade deal with China.

Well, sort of. There are many blanks to fill in before anyone knows what the two sides are actually agreeing to. Not to mention hardliners in the administration who will do all they can to silence the love fest's beating heart.


There are also dozens of US lawmakers with sharpened knives, waiting for details about how Trump's agreement measures up to his pledge to end the decades of carnage - another classic Trump term - that China's state-driven economy has inflicted on American workers.

But let's savour the love fest because this moment in US-China relations is likely to be more fleeting than the tenure of a Trump cabinet secretary.

Consider that the positive outcome in Washington occurred exactly a week after the NBA's Daryl Morey uncorked a geyser of acrimony that threatened to rip the US and China apart in a way that would electrify Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.

The tweet, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's defence of Morey's freedom of speech, prompted Beijing to unfurl the banner of the People's Republic of Victimhood and fan the flames of hatred.

There's plenty of historical context to explain why many Chinese get extremely upset about any perceived threats to territorial integrity.

Wars that enforced widespread opium addiction on millions of Chinese, foreign concessions in some of China's biggest port cities, unequal treaties, Western powers handing huge parts of the Chinese mainland to Japan. The list is quite long, and every detail remains fresh in the memories of mainland Chinese.

Unfortunately, you could fit the number of Americans knowledgeable of this history into a Panda Express dining room. And Morey wouldn't be included.

There are those in America who want to impede China's rise, but Morey isn't one of them. He was supporting the idea that Hongkongers should have a greater say in their own governance, something no American would see as part of a nefarious anti-China plot.

To demonise Morey and the entire NBA was a miscalculation. China's government is stunningly effective at whipping up its own into a froth of hatred, but doing so by trashing the NBA was threatening to boost the electoral chances of any American politician looking to bash Beijing.

The Chinese government apparently came to the conclusion that a sustained hate-the-NBA strategy might help to elect the most anti-Chinese US government in history in 2020, and so the two preseason NBA matches in Shanghai and Shenzhen went ahead as scheduled.

Which brings us back to Liu in Washington and the display of bonhomie that countered all of the indications a week ago that the talks would end in mutual recriminations, if they were to happen at all.

Instead, we got further evidence that leaders in Beijing are coming to the conclusion that Trump is their best friend in Washington. Not only does he shower praise on Xi, but he also shares with China's leadership a disdain for political checks and balances and independent judiciaries.

They've given him another temporary win. US$50 billion in soybean purchases might not address the fundamental outstanding issues, but it goes a long way to cutting down China's trade surplus with the US. And Trump gave China nothing on the Huawei front.

However, all of those blanks in the "phase one" agreement Liu struck with Trump will take a while to fill, and the evidence against Trump in the impeachment inquiries continues to mount.

So, it's in the interest of China's leaders to slow walk the steps ahead. They may need to find another friend in Washington soon.

Robert Delaney is the Post's US bureau chief

Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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