Donald Trump Is Taking The Battle To China

From a brewing trade war to North Korea, Donald Trump is taking the battle to China.

- Ananth Krishnan in Beijing

 When China announced on June 19, with little prior warning, that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had already arrived in Beijing under a shroud of secrecy for an unexpected two-day visit, the news was striking on many levels. Kim’s armoured train was a topic of particular public fascination but more momeorable perhaps was the fact that it had taken the young dictator six years to make his first visit to China. His latest visit, however, would remarkably be his third in as many months, following an ‘informal’ seaside summit with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Dalian in May. The message from the three visits was clear: the old Communist allies were very much still, as Mao Zedong proclaimed to Kim’s grandfather, “as close as lips and teeth”.

Yet the very need for the two allies to reaffirm their ties points to the disruption below the surface. In truth, Beijing has been caught off-guard by United States President Donald Trump’s remarkable rapprochement with North Korea—meeting Kim in Singapore on June 12, only months after threatening to rain down “fire and fury” on him—and has been scrambling to keep up. The three quickly-arranged summits with Kim have, to a degree, enabled that precisely. Kim and Xi have appeared to closely align their views, and Chinese officials were left pleasantly surprised by Trump’s dramatic and unexpected offer to cease US-South Korea war games—long a headache for Beijing.

THE TRADE SPAT