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The president of the US, Donald Trump, has been in China meeting Xi Jinping
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It was an interesting meeting. I thought Donald Trump appeared to be on very good behavior from the televisual clips that I've been treated to
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So we had a great stay. It was an amazing period of time
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President Xi is an incredible guy. We got along, made a lot of great trade deals, including over 200 planes for Boeing with a promise of 750 planes, which will be by far the largest order ever if they do a good job in the 200, which I'm sure they will
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All I can say is that was a great success. It was fantastic. We made great deals, we did great trade deals, we had great relationships, and a lot of things have happened that you'll be hearing about
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But that was a tremendous success. I think it really was a historic moment
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Thank you very much. I'm joined by Bill Hayton, fellow in the Asia-Pacific program at Chatham House
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author of The Invention of China. Nice to see you this morning, Bill. Morning
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He did seem on quite good behavior for Donald Trump, I thought
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for considering how he... You might say he was muzzled, really. And you were just talking about billionaires
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He had quite a few billionaires on the trip with him to, you know, kind of talk business and trade
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And maybe they had pressed on him the importance of, you know, not mucking this one up
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But I mean you know I think the trip was a great success but it was a great success for China I not quite sure what it was for Donald Trump You sort of beaten me to my next question because I was just going to ask you who you thought the winner news
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How come China did so well? Well, I think what they did was they forced Donald Trump
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to kind of frame things in the way that they like to frame things. So he's come home saying, you know, Taiwan is very close to China, I've noticed
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and it's quite a long way from America, as if he's discovered that for the first time
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But, I mean, he hasn't formally made any commitments. So my guess is that the haggling is still going on
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Basically, there's a proposal to sell a lot more weapons to Taiwan, and he's saying now he's neutral on that
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But so is there some haggling going on? I mean, I don't think that the Chinese aren't in this to be generous to the U.S
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I mean, they see this as a struggle for the future of supremacy in Asia and maybe the world as well
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and Xi Jinping has made the retaking of Taiwan part of what he calls his mission of national rejuvenation
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So he's not going to compromise on that. So the best we can hope for is stability
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And it's clear there's so many things going on. There's the tariffs, there's Iran, there's will America sell the most advanced chips to China
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as in computer chips, and all the rest of it that's going on
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And it's clear that nothing has really been substantially agreed at this
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There was no big announcement of breakthroughs. There was some good sort of little things that Trump can take home
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We going to sell Boeing jets and that sort of thing But that an order that could be know at a moment notice Is there anything other leaders Oh I don know what that noise is Is there anything other leaders can learn from the way Xi Jinping handled Donald Trump
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Or is it simply, if you are at the helm of one of the largest economies on the world
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you are afforded a power base that somehow neutralises Trump's? yeah i mean china has weaponized its advantages you know pretty well i mean these these minerals
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called rare earths which are not that rare but the actual you know ability to mine them and
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process them is is quite rare um and you know they have been able to basically you know turn a lot of
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america's trade weapons back on the u.s um you know china's not paying you know china's not a
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generous country okay it's self-interested you know we're in the we're in an age of interstate
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competition here. And the Chinese quite like it when every country fights for themselves
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because they're a very big country. And if you're a small or a medium-sized country
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you get pressured. And clearly, even a country the size of the United States
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you know, is coming under pressure. Trump has tried to use tariffs to make China do what he
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wants. And China has seen this coming. You know, they had years to think about, you know
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what a second Trump administration would be. So they've stockpiled minerals, they've stockpiled
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oil, you know, they've thought about the pinch points like rare earths and all the rest of it
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And they're giving as good as they get. So we're kind of in this really nasty competition between states at the moment
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I must ask about Iran. The two nations seem to have both are reliant
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We all reliant to some degree on the straighter forward moves What progress if any what alliances if any what agreements if any were struck between the two men on Iran
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Well, I'm always careful about this word of alliances. You know, China has one alliance, and that's with North Korea
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It has no alliances with anybody else. But it clearly has partners and friends
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who have different levels of influence. And I think China sees that propping up Iran right now
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is a good thing for its interests. It doesn't want to see the Iranian regime collapse. And it's, you know, it's not it's not part of some sort of defense alliance with Iran
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But clearly, it doesn't want to see the Americans prevail. It's quite like to see them bogged down, wasting their energy
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And they reckon that they can sit this one out. They've been, you know, for the last year, they've been buying far more oil than they need so that they can, you know, survive something like this
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as American inflation is going up, and they're thinking that the Americans are going to kind of feel the pain before they do
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So, you know, and Chinese companies appear to be still trying to sell things like rocket fuel to the Iranians
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So it's, you know, I don't see that the Chinese are rushing to put pressure on the Iranians
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They seem to have rebuffed pressure even from the Arab Gulf states to do that
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so it seems that they're kind of just sitting back and watching as Napoleon said, never interrupt the enemy while he's making a mistake
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Bill Hayton for Chatham House Pleasure talking to your most illuminating conversation
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I really took home that point that China's probably quite enjoying America
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getting bogged down in Iran and wasting all their energy
