Cold War fears cloud Trump-Xi summit

International Desk: President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping will hold the most important meeting between the leaders of the United States and China in decades in Argentina on Saturday night.

It's not just that the two men have the power to call a truce in a multi-billion dollar trade war that has damaged both sides and the global economy.

They meet at a defining moment in US-China ties which are turning sharply more adversarial with Beijing being more assertive on the world stage and Washington shifting to a more confrontational pose.

For decades, US policy on China has been premised on drawing the rising giant into a rules-based international system, on the basis that greater economic opening would inevitably lead to political liberalization.

But that goal, pursued by Democratic and Republican administrations, proved futile. Instead, and especially under the strongman leadership of Xi, China has stuck to market economics but clamped down on political freedoms.

Beijing is now seeking to impose its weight on its own region and beyond, making sweeping territorial claims in the South China Sea, sparking concerns of accidental clashes between the US and Chinese navies.

After decades of discrete and careful diplomacy, it is now seeking to extend its political, military and economic influence into Europe and Africa and offers developing nations an alternative model to the West's liberalized societies.

As a result, there are growing fears that the rising superpower could clash with the existing dominant global force, the United States, and the Xi-Trump summit takes place as anxiety mounts over a possible new, pan-Pacific Cold War.

Source: CNN


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