The first meeting between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping next week follows months of ups and downs in the critical relationship, and much of the world is watching to see what happens next.
Bilateral issues and the role of each country in the Pacific region are on the table at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, setting an agenda that will likely impact future discussions between the two largest world economies.
In a tweet soon after the two sides officially confirmed the meetings, Trump suggested a “very difficult” meeting with Jinping.
President Trump caused a flurry of comments from Beijing three days after being sworn in when he withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP, a 12-nation trade group years in the making, had been a key element of the Obama administration’s pivot toward Asia; Trump harshly criticized the pact, and accused China of manipulating its currency and pushing unfair trade agreements.
China’s expanded naval presence in the South China Sea has also drawn a negative reaction from the Trump White House, as it did during the Obama administration; Asian governments along the coast worry that Beijing aims to establish military hegemony, and look to the US to limit Chinese power in the region. China maintains it is working within its sphere of influence.
Perhaps the toughest problem facing the two presidents is the growing nuclear threat from North Korea. Recent tests of missiles fired from the North into the Sea of Japan, along with hostile statements by the government in Pyongyang, have heightened concerns in Washington and Asian capitals.
No one is certain of North Korea’s strategic goals, but it is clear that the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is intent on developing a nuclear weapons capability that will have offensive military capability. South Korean officials say a nuclear missile test could be carried out by Pyongyang at any time.
For 40 years after the start of the Korean War in 1950 China was a major ally of the North – since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its only significant supplier of vital resources including food and coal.
China has used its influence from time to time to pressure North Korea to moderate threats to regional stability, even while the ruling Kim family – now in its third generation – has imposed harsh conditions on North Korea’s population, and gradually built up its military strength.
The authoritarian regime in Pyongyang has oriented its economic programs toward expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, and Kim Jong Un has taken recently to threatening an attack on US facilities in East Asia.
Such threats have been met with diplomatic initiatives and economic sanctions, and have coincided with a decline in the state of relations between Beijing and Pyongyang. North Korea stepped up its criticism of China earlier this year, accusing Beijing of “dancing to the tune of the US.”
Tensions increased further when, in mid-February, the exiled half-brother of Kim Jong Un was assassinated at an airport in Malaysia. Kim’s brother, Kim Jong Nam, had been rumored as a potential threat to the regime in Pyongyang, and was killed by assassins used chemical compounds banned by international treaties.
North Korea denied complicity, lashed out at foreign critics, and announced further missile tests. During this period China cut off shipments of coal to North Korea, saying it was complying with limits imposed by international sanctions.
The threat of a nuclear war erupting in a spasm of rage on the Korean Peninsula was high on the agenda when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with China’s President Xi in Beijing in mid-March. Those talks, and North Korea’s uncertain intentions and nuclear capabilities, set the table for conversations at President Trump’s Florida estate.
It’s not clear whether North Korea – an impoverished country with unpredictable leadership seeking to build and perhaps use nuclear weapons – will move to the top of the US-China agenda. Nations in Asia, the Pacific region, and around the world, are hoping it will – and that decisive action will follow.
