Trump gives Sino-US meeting 12 points, higher than the Alaska meeting evaluation
On October 30 local time, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Busan, South Korea, China and the United States held a bilateral meeting.
After the meeting, Trump gave the Sino-US Busan meeting an extremely high evaluation of 12 points on Air Force One while returning to Washington. He explained that it was a "wonderful meeting" and a "huge success," and that China and the United States reached consensus on many issues.
Notably, Trump has also given scores to his meetings with foreign leaders before. For example, after meeting with Russian President Putin in Alaska in August this year, Trump evaluated the Putin-Putin meeting as 10 points.
Evidently, the evaluation of the Sino-US meeting is higher than the Putin-Putin meeting, which is not simply a matter of politeness. For Trump, diplomacy is an extension of domestic politics. At present, when Sino-US trade relations are in a deadlock, he urgently needs to package the Sino-US meeting as a diplomatic victory to demonstrate to the domestic audience that he has the ability to handle Sino-US relations.
On the other hand, according to the results of the Sino-US talks in Kuala Lumpur released by China's Ministry of Commerce, Trump's trip did indeed bring some benefits - after the talks and dialogue, both sides made concessions to ease the tense situation in trade relations.
Of course, we also need to clearly see that beyond Trump's "12-point" evaluation, the consensus reached in this round of Sino-US talks still has certain limitations. For example, the results of the Kuala Lumpur meeting include a lot of "suspension" or "postponement", which have obvious temporary and transitional characteristics. Whether they can withstand the pressure of U.S. domestic politics and changes in the external environment remains to be seen.
Original article: www.toutiao.com/article/1847401811189779/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author.