Confident Xi to meet Trump at tenuous time in U.S.-China trade war
The leaders of the world’s two biggest economies will meet Thursday, just days after the Trump administration declared it had brokered a tentative tariff truce, in an encounter that could soothe fears - at least temporarily - about the consequential U.S.-China relationship veering painfully off course.
For Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the meeting will be vindication that Beijing’s use of economic coercion to gain an edge over Washington is effective - especially because the vague deal outlined by U.S. trade envoys over the weekend represents little more than a return to the status quo before Trump came back to the Oval Office in January.
“The Chinese ‘escalate to de-escalate’ model worked to get them what they wanted,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, who was in Beijing this month for talks on security issues.
“They want the U.S. to learn humility, and they want the U.S. to understand who holds the upper hand here. There’s quite a bit of arrogance involved,” she added.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/confident-xi-meet-trump-tenuous-140426450.html
Xi knows he's playing a game of wits with an unarmed man.