Another view ...
... In perhaps the most telling moment of their two-day summit, Chinese leader Xi Jinping looked U.S. President Donald Trump in the eye and told him, not so subtly, that China is eclipsing the United States as the world's leading power.
"The world has reached a crossroads," Mr. Xi said, addressing Mr. Trump across a long table and a centerpiece of pink and white flowers, as senior Chinese and American officials looked on.
"Can the U.S. and China overcome the so-called Thucydides Trap' and create a new paradigm for great power relations?" Mr. Xi asked, with a faint smile. He was referring to the 5th-century Greek historian Thucydides, who described how the rise of city-state Athens alarmed the established power, Sparta, making the Peloponnesian War inevitable.
In less than three minutes of carefully crafted opening remarks to Mr. Trump at their first meeting on Thursday in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Mr. Xi presented the American president with a confident statement of China's inevitable ascent, challenged him to handle it without conflict, and laid out Beijing's new framework for how to do just that.
Mr. Xi's message to Mr. Trump was clear: "You're the declining power, we are the rising power. ... So the question for you is whether you're going to accept our rise and not resist," says Nadge Rolland, distinguished fellow in China Studies at the National Bureau of Asian Research, a U.S. think tank. "All of that is said with a ... red-carpet treatment, but these are very brutal assessments of the situation, and they are veiled threats as well." ...
Another view ...
Beyond the pomp and pageantry, Xi Jinping sent a message to Donald Trump
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