President Trump told reporters in Tokyo who asked about his impending meeting with Xi Jinping, “I like him. He likes me.” He predicted a successful “transaction.”
The notion that Xi “likes” Trump and would allow that to influence Chinese policies is laughable. And the fact that Trump thinks about managing China as a “transaction” reveals that he does not understand the concept of long-term strategy and policies, which Xi profoundly understands.
As Xi told Putin in Moscow in 2023, “what we are trying to do hasn’t been done in 100 years.” The video clip is below. What did that mean? It refers to the fall of the czars in Russia at the hands of the Bolsheviks and the collapse of the Ching dynasty in China, which eventually led to Communist Party control (after some nasty wars) The analogy is clear to anyone who understands the history: he and Putin want to destroy the existing world order dominated by the United States.
Here are some of the threads of what Xi is doing: He is using technology and censorship to control what the Chinese people know and think. As part of his goal to shape the “global discourse” about China, he is using some of his IT tools around the world, including A.I. generated disinformation, in an attempt to discredit and disrupt the concept of democracy, which he regards as a threat to his Communist Party. TikTok is just one piece of that tapestry and it appears the recent deal transferring ownership to American billionaires does not interrupt Chinese control of the algorithm. When combined with his financial and dual use support for Iran and Russia, his Belt and Road Initiative, the manufacturing juggernaut that Made In China 2025 has created, China’s dominance of supply chains for critically needed rare earths, the building of naval bases in strategic areas of the world and overall expansion of China’s Navy and armed fishing fleet, the sheer scale of what Xi is trying to achieve becomes clear. It’s an absolute tragedy that Trump thinks he can be pals with Xi and have a “transaction” that addresses China’s global challenges.
thhttps://www.youtube.com/shorts/bEpTRr7QcWg
