story“Rivals in power” (6/6). “Le Monde” returns, in a six-part series, to the key events in the tumultuous history between Beijing and Washington. Supporter of a hard line, the American president has continued, during his mandate, to widen the scope of disputes with China, to the point of making it the scapegoat of the pandemic.
It is cold in Tiananmen Square this Thursday, November 9, 2017. At the foot of a Palace of the People’s Assembly delivered to drafts, a squad of schoolchildren is rehearsing. At the signal of a protocol official, it suddenly comes to life, energetically waving small American and Chinese flags before stopping just as suddenly. A little later, the disciplined children reserve the same enthusiasm for commanding the President of the United States, Donald Trump, received with respect by his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
Later, on board Air Force One, which flies to Vietnam, the former businessman talks about this welcome, and in particular the reception organized in the Forbidden City. “They say that in the history of leaders who have visited China, there has never been anything like this, and I believe them. Have you seen the show? It was amazing,” he says, before boasting “the largest state dinner ever held in China”, obviously in his honor.
This is the same president who made China a target during the election campaign a year earlier. In the Trumpian universe, the Chinese giant has taken the place of Japan, which was drowning its country in exports, as he complained in 1987 in an page intended to start a campaign that had never seen the light of day. .
This vision of the world, deeply anchored in the psyche of a man governed by his instincts, kept him at a distance from the geopolitical calculation which finished showing its limits the moment he settled into the Oval office of the Maison Blanche: that of an economic integration of China, which would involve a liberal and democratic contagion. Indifferent to these concerns, Donald Trump approaches the Chinese issue from the only angle that matters to him, that of the balance of power.
Witness the appointment as trade adviser of Peter Navarro, an academic with no political experience, chosen for his crusade in favor of protectionism, author above all of a rant against the Chinese economy, accused of having precipitated American deindustrialization. This documentary, Death by Chinadepicts a map of the United States stabbed by a knife made in China.
Balance of power
Within the National Security Council, a former journalist for Archyde.com and the Wall Street Journal, Matthew Pottinger, also passed by the marines, also defends a hawkish vision of the relationship with China. Relieved of the excesses of Peter Navarro, she is above all fueled by a knowledge of the country facilitated by her mastery of Mandarin. “Living in China shows you what an undemocratic country can do to its citizens,” he wrote in 2005 in the Wall Street Journal.
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