At the summit in Mar-a-Lago, U.S. President Donald Trump hopes to alter deeply-rooted Chinese policies despite having no China strategy. China’s Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping hopes that by making deals on secondary matters important to Trump, he can indefinitely postpone America’s development of a strategic response to China’s rise. I offer a framework for an American China strategy at the end of this piece.
Xi is offering the United States a chance to make a mistake the Chinese call “throwing aside a watermelon to pick up sesame seeds” (丢了西瓜捡芝麻). The Mar-a-Lago sesame seeds may be Chinese factories that hire American workers, progress on a bilateral investment treaty, or agreement to tighten the screws on Chinese corporations that do business with Pyongyang: all welcome developments. But the watermelon, which Xi wants, is long-term global influence. America’s lack of an informed, energetic China strategy a deficit which predates the Trump administra