China Rolls Out Red Carpet for Trump, Obama Didn’t Even Get a Staircase
Last year when President Barack Obama visited China, their rebuke of his presence was anything but subtle.
When Obama arrived in China a day before the start of the G-20 Summit, authorities refused to dine him by rolling out a red carpet in his honor, and forced him to exit out the rear end of the plane.
On the contrary, President Trump had the opposite experience when arriving to China with his lovely wife Melania.
They were definitely embraced in a much more pleasant manner.
According to conservativetribune:
President Donald Trump had no such problem when he arrived Wednesday in China as part of a multi-day overseas tour.
The Chinese not only rolled out a literal red carpet for his arrival, but they lavished him with “red carpet” treatment that The Washington Post described as “florid displays of diplomatic pageantry and poetry.”
Check out Trump arriving in China with first lady Melania Trump here:
Later that same evening, Trump and Melania watched a Peking Opera performance at the Forbidden City, the ancient palace complex in central Beijing where “China’s emperors lived for nearly six centuries,” according to NPR.
Before ending the night, the Trumps dined with Chinese President Xi Jingping and his wife in another section of the Forbidden City, as reported by the U.K. Daily Mail.
According to the Post, the president received an even more stunning welcome the following morning, when Jinping held a “lavish welcome ceremony featuring a military honor guard and cannon fire at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing” that, incidentally, involved yet another literal red carpet:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/928519663780208640
What’s interesting is how the South China Morning Post later described Trump’s visit to China, which concluded Friday.
“Despite the tensions between the two countries, Trump’s trip to China is the first to be described by Beijing as a ‘state visit-plus’, with the foreign ministry highlighting more ‘informal interactions’ between the leaders,” the newspaper noted.
David Denoon, a professor of politics and economics and New York University, pointed out in a column Friday for The Hill that “the Trump approach has been to emphasize his personal relationship with China’s President, Xi Jinping.”
“President Obama spent dozens of hours trying to convince Presidents Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping that it was in China’s interest to: adopt a realistic exchange rate for the yuan; inhibit North Korea’s nuclear weapons program; and establish strict emission standards for greenhouse gases,” he wrote.
Trump has instead “placed his personal links to Xi front and center” so as to build a real and meaningful relationship with the Chinese versus lecturing them just as Obama often lectured — and continues to lecture — everyone with whom he holds differing views.
Trump is leveraging a personal relationship to try to improve the relationship between the two countries as a whole. Judging by the lavish treatment he received in China, I think it’s safe to say his strategy is working.