Trump: Making China Great

http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/how-donald-trump-is-making-chinese-leadership-look-great-in-comparison/news-story/6256f59d6ab578b5ca0c6fc875ed16af

WHEN Donald Trump lands in Beijing on Wednesday, expect China to roll out the red carpet.


And why shouldn’t they welcome the United States President who is making China’s leader look great in comparison?

Ahead of Trump’s first visit to Asia, many commentators have pointed out how the US President has weakened American’s stance in the world and allowed China to assert more dominance.

Essentially, the more Trump “made himself a laughing stock”, the better China appeared by comparison, University of Hong Kong’s Professor Xu Guoqi told CNN.

“Ironically, he seems to have clearly helped make China great internationally,” he said.

Chinese political expert at the University of Melbourne, Dr Pradeep Taneja said China had already been on the rise for quite some time but Mr Trump’s attitude towards American leadership had enabled Chinese President Xi Jinping — who some consider China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong — to look good both domestically and internationally.

In particular, Dr Taneja points to Mr Xi’s speech in January to the World Economic Forum at Davos — the first delivered by a Chinese president — where he defended globalisation and took some sideswipes at Mr Trump, who was the president-elect at the time.

“Here was Xi representing himself as a champion of globalisation, which is what you would normally expect from an American president, but Trump was too busy talking about ‘America First’,” Dr Taneja told news.com.au.

“Rather than being the leader of the free world ... Trump was portraying himself simply as the leader of America.”


Other American decisions that have helped to make Mr Xi look good include the US decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement on global warming, which China continued to back.

It doesn’t help that Mr Trump also seems to compare unfavourably to his predecessor Barack Obama.

“Obama was seen as quite sensible, had a good grasp of policy and was essentially very learned,” Dr Taneja said.

“He could articulate American policy and views on situations around the world very well. He was able to focus on domestic and foreign policy issues at the same time.

“Trump on the other hand, doesn’t have a good grasp of foreign policy and can’t seem to focus on too many things at the same time.

“Weak American leadership has certainly helped China.”