{"id":56,"date":"2026-05-20T05:37:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T05:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=56"},"modified":"2026-05-20T05:37:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T05:37:37","slug":"trump-should-distrust-and-verify-xi-after-beijing-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homebuyerrelocation.com\/?p=56","title":{"rendered":"Trump should distrust and verify Xi after Beijing summit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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OPINION:<\/strong><\/p>\n

How successful was the summit last week in Beijing? President Trump said it was a \u201cgreat success.\u201d Xi Jinping, China\u2019s supreme ruler, merely called the meeting \u201cconstructive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Warsh\u2019s toughest challenge: Fighting inflation in a more hostile world<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps Mr. Xi thought: \u201cTrump is cunning and unpredictable, so I had better keep our relations on an even keel while he is in office.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is also possible that he thought: \u201cI know how to play Trump. Vladimir Putin is also paying me a visit in a few days. I will tell him, Kim Jong-un and those now calling the shots in Tehran what they need to do next.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you watched the summit on TV, you saw the pageantry: a military honor guard, flag-waving children and an elaborate red-carpet ceremony.<\/p>\n

What you might not have noticed: All that was staged in the shadow of Tiananmen Square, where, in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party massacred hundreds, possibly thousands, of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators.<\/p>\n

Nine years later, the blood long since scrubbed from the square, President Clinton arrived in Beijing to toast China\u2019s rulers. He soon began pushing for China\u2019s admission into the World Trade Organization. That came about in 2001.<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing China into the WTO is a win-win decision,\u201d Mr. Clinton said. \u201cIt will protect our prosperity, and it will promote the right kind of change in China.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a noble experiment, and it failed.<\/p>\n

Since then, the CCP has waged a relentless campaign against American interests: stealing intellectual property on an industrial scale, infiltrating critical infrastructure through cyber operations and flooding American communities with fentanyl while its state media and an algorithm with 179 million American users flood American minds with disinformation.<\/p>\n

Last week, Mr. Trump announced that the summit had resulted in agreements on Chinese purchases of American agricultural products and Boeing jets. He also said Mr. Xi agreed that the Strait of Hormuz should remain an international waterway and that Iran\u2019s rulers should not have nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Will Mr. Xi stop providing Tehran with satellite intelligence to target U.S. forces? As President Ronald Reagan didn\u2019t quite say: Distrust and verify.<\/p>\n

Xi Jinping is a Marxist\/Leninist\/Stalinist\/Maoist. Among his titles: general secretary of the CCP, president of the People\u2019s Republic of China and chairman of the Central Military Commission.<\/p>\n

Beneath this framework lies something older and no less dangerous: the imperial conviction that China is not merely a great power but also the rightful center of civilization itself, the Middle Kingdom, the literal center of the world, surrounded by less-civilized people who must pay tribute to the only legitimate ruler of the planet.<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi\u2019s long-term goal is nothing less than a new world order, one in which China displaces the U.S. as the world\u2019s dominant nation.<\/p>\n

During the summit, he invoked the \u201cThucydides Trap\u201d \u2014 the idea that a rising power challenging an established hegemon risks conflict. The implication was clear: If the U.S. refuses to accommodate Beijing\u2019s ambitions, then war is all but inevitable.<\/p>\n

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He has made such arguments for years to his roughly 100 million CCP comrades. His speeches and articles have been carefully read in Mandarin by Matt Pottinger, an incisive China expert who served as deputy national security adviser in the first Trump administration and now chairs the China program at my think tank.<\/p>\n

For example, this observation by Mr. Xi in a CCP textbook: \u201cOur state\u2019s ideology and social system are incompatible with the West. This determines that our struggle and contest with Western countries is irreconcilable, so it will inevitably be long, complicated and sometimes even very sharp.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where it may be sharpest soonest is on Taiwan. Mr. Xi is determined to seize and subjugate the Taiwanese \u2014 free, self-governing, prosperous people who would prefer not to be ruled by communists on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.<\/p>\n

Mr. Xi is also keenly aware that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., TSMC, fabricates about 90% of the world\u2019s most advanced chips. These are vital for the development of artificial intelligence. Whoever controls such chips controls the commanding heights of the AI-driven world to come.<\/p>\n

At the summit, Mr. Xi warned that a clash with the U.S. over Taiwan could create \u201can extremely dangerous situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump did not backtrack from the long-held U.S. position of \u201cstrategic ambiguity,\u201d declining to say whether the U.S. would help defend the Taiwanese if they were attacked. He also did not say whether he will approve a pending $14 billion arms sale that Taiwan needs for deterrence and, should that fail, defense.<\/p>\n

Those who characterize this summit as signaling a detente cite a toast Mr. Xi offered during a state banquet at the Great Hall of the People. The U.S. and China, he said, \u201cshould be partners rather than rivals.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would remind you of two maxims from \u201cThe Art of War\u201d by the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu: \u201cAll warfare is based on deception\u201d and \u201cHold out baits to entice the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within the foreign policy establishment and the media, we repeatedly hear that the U.S. and China are engaged in a \u201cstrategic competition.\u201d That sounds like an Olympic table tennis match, which may mislead people to believe we can sit back and let the best \u201cideology and social system\u201d win.<\/p>\n

It is imperative to understand that the American experiment, now 250 years old, is being stress-tested by what is, by almost every measure, the most powerful communist party in history.<\/p>\n

If our goal is to pass on our way of life to our children, then serious efforts and real sacrifices will be required.<\/p>\n

If instead we allow CCP algorithms to disinform us while Beijing arms and emboldens its allies in Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang, then we will have squandered what took 2\u00bd centuries to build. Mr. Xi is counting on it.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the \u201cForeign Podicy\u201d podcast.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Trump-backed Gallrein defeats Massie in Kentucky GOP primary<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How successful was the summit last week in Beijing? 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