US-China talks: Beijing is open if Trump respects: The first thing to know, I think, is that China has always been saying that it is open to dialogue, but then obviously there’s always the fine print. And China has always framed its openness to dialogue as a willingness to talk as long as it is based on equality and mutual respect.
But we are able to report today that China is open to talks with little more specific conditions attached to it. First of all, as I said, China is demanding some respect and specifically, it basically wants the Trump administration to rein in some of the cabinet members who make disparaging remarks about China.
And then the other more specific condition is that China wants the U.S. to appoint a person that you could have those talks with, which is understandable, because we’ve seen how different members of the administration have said different things over the course of the last couple of months.
And China is frustrated that it doesn’t really know what the U.S. wants from this negotiation and this person as long as he or she could put together a deal that both the president could put their names on.
It’s about understanding that China didn’t designate anybody. Okay. If that’s what needs to happen. But isn’t the issue with that that we ultimately see Donald Trump being the final arbiter of what the U.S. side will accept?
And isn’t that the problem that we face here, that he’s obviously thinks of himself as a dealmaker and probably wants to be pulling the strings. I think that is the reason that the Chinese ultimately just going to be dealing with Trump. Isn’t that the level at which this needs to be sorted out?
I think we all know that Trump likes to deal with other leaders one on one, to get them together in the same room and just hash it out between two leaders. But that’s not how China normally operates here. And the bottom line is that China wants to deal with someone who actually represents or knows what Trump wants so that any negotiation will have a meaningful outcome.
Source: raialkhalij + aljazeera