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Andrew Marr speaks with LBC's Washington correspondent Simon Marks about Donald Trump's state visit to China. The President touched down in Beijing ahead of a crunch summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump said late on Tuesday he will ask Chinese President Xi to "open up" China during his meeting with the leader. Simon Marks says that 'trade' will be on the President's mind, as Trump hopes for Chinese 'investment' in the US. Marks also breaks down the dynamic between the two presidents, saying that Trump seems to want to be 'treated as an equal'. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #simonmarks #andrewmarr #uspolitics #trump #china #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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The state visit by Donald Trump to China is of vast importance
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These are the world's two great superpowers. They compete on the high seas, in the air, in space, in business
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And among the potential flashpoints which could cause a war between them is, of course, Taiwan
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Let's talk to LBC's Washington correspondent, Simon Marks. Simon, this is, on the international stage, perhaps President Trump's biggest moment of his second term
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Oh, no question about that, Andrew. I think in many ways the biggest moment in terms of America's relationship with China since President Richard Nixon back in 1972 made that historic journey to Peking, as it was called then, and met with Chairman Mao and began an entirely new phase in the bilateral relationship
0:48
That is what Donald Trump is aiming for in this visit. And it's almost easier to understand what is not really going to be center stage on the agenda in order to see what this meeting is all about
1:03
They're not going to sit there talking about human rights, if at all, for very long
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President Trump certainly doesn't want to talk about the war on Iran
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He wants to just be left alone to deal with that himself. He's not looking for Chinese help or assistance or involvement in that
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And I think that it is also highly unlikely that Taiwan is actually going to be center stage in their conversations
1:29
Indeed the last two face conversations they have had as leaders of their respective countries The U side has been at pains after those talks to say Taiwan was never discussed What Donald Trump wants this to be all about is trade which is why Air Force One was packed to the gunnels with captains of trade and industry from across a whole variety of different sectors here
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tech, defence, crypto, a whole variety of different sectors represented in that entourage that
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President Trump has taken to China. He wants to get past the trade disputes that he frankly
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initiated, Joe Biden largely did. He certainly cemented in place and he wants to move to a new
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much more positive situation in which he hopes China is going to agree to invest in the United
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States. And in terms of what China has that America really needs, it's also rare earth minerals
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all those things needed by the high tech industries needed for AI, which China has an awful lot of
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and America very little. So there is, you know, there's trade on both sides to be done
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Yes, absolutely. I mean, the United States covets rare earths under Donald Trump wherever it sees
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them. And it certainly covets what's beneath Chinese soil. Equally, the Chinese really want
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to get their hands on some of the advanced semiconductors being produced by American
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companies that are subject to export controls and sanctions. So there's lots of bargaining to be
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done. But what President Trump really wants to demonstrate through this is that he is treated by
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President Xi as an equal partner He looking for an awful lot of pomp and ceremony and circumstance to come out of this visit that offers him a degree of reflected glory so that this trip can be seen here in the United States through that prism
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The Chinese, of course, will be very well aware of that, and they're certainly going to put on a show
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But whether they give him everything that he wants, given that China always plays the long game and will be wondering about who is going to succeed him in the Oval Office
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Well, let's wait and see how that turns out. Let me ask you a bit more about the Taiwan issue, because for an awful long time, people have been saying, you know, tapping their noses, saying this is the next big war
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Watch Taiwan. But I do know military sources in the UK say that because Xi has sacked most of his senior military people recently, it's very, very unlikely that he's planning anything. Is that also the view in Washington
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Yeah, well, you've got two things going on simultaneously. You've got those purges within
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the Chinese military and defence infrastructure that, of course, raise questions about who is now
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going to be in central command and control positions and how long do they need to get up
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to speed with their new respective briefs? And will they survive in those positions? So that has
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raised questions over the intelligence community's general sense that China would be ready to try and
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take Taiwan back into the mainland's aegis by next year, 2027. But the other thing that's going on
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of course, is the calculus that everybody's got to make about Donald Trump. Do we think that
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Donald Trump and even some of his fellow Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are really going to a ride to the rescue of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion There are far more questions about that now than existed before Donald Trump returned to power for
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his second term. Of course. I can't resist, Simon, asking you about how Washington is viewing the
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extraordinary events going on here in London, where we have, to put it gently, a certain amount
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of political turmoil going on. We had Warren Stevens, the US ambassador
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here on the show yesterday, and he did say that a constant revolving door of people
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made it harder to do business. Yeah, absolutely. And there's some irony in that, right
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given that Keir Starmer has been on the receiving end of a continuing series of kickings by the American president
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that have certainly chipped away at his credibility in the UK to some extent
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But I think you also heard from the ambassador yesterday an eagerness not to kind of wade too deep into the territory of what's going to happen next
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I mean, the reality is that West Streeting could be here in Washington, D.C
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and walking down Pennsylvania Avenue and very few people would recognize him and know who he is
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So, I mean, to that extent, the political class here doesn't really know, I think, in large measure
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how to prepare for a possible streeting premiership or Angela Rayner or Andrew Burnham
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I mean, none of those people is household names here. I would just love to
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But evidently, you know, America's watching because it's high drama. I would just love to see Donald Trump and Angela Rayner on two sides of a table at a summit
6:34
That would be absolutely popcorn special
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