China has no illusions about the U.S. Any agreement reached between Trump and Xi will be superficial and will not reorient the two countries towards a more constructive relationship. From Hua Bin at unz.com:
All eyes are on Geyongju, South Korea for a rumored “side talk” between Trump and Xi later this week. Beijing has not confirmed but Trump and Bessent sounded positive.
Among the topics are rare earth, tariff, soybean, chips, and Taiwan.
While diplomatic protocols and direct talks between principals of major powers are important and some transactional deals may be reached, such a meeting is more likely a nothing burger and no grand bargain will be struck.
If the past 7 years, since Trump launched the first trade war on China, have taught us anything, the lesson is that the US is bent on containing China’s rise and blocking its progress.
Unless the US rids itself of its hostility towards China, with an odds less than zero, the two countries will remain in a long-term adversarial standoff.
In western political tradition, captured in Graham Allison’s Thucydides Trap and John Mearsheimer’s Aggressive Realism concepts, geopolitics is a zero-sum game. One nation can only preserve and grow its power at the expense of another.
China doesn’t subscribe to such a worldview and has never had in its 2,000-year political tradition. However, geopolitics is a race to the bottom – if your opponent defines the game as zero-sum, you are automatically brought to his level unless you don’t react to his provocations, take the beating, and turn the other cheek.
Imagine a school yard – you want to mind your own business, but the reigning bully won’t let you alone. He keeps pushing and threatening. However unwilling, you have to stand up and get into a fight to preserve your dignity and credibility, even when you know both will lose in such a fight.
