None of that mattered, though.

While Trump arrived for the summit wanting deals and help on Iran, Xi wanted only one thing: for China to be recognized as an equal power. He got it in spades.

“I say it to everybody, you’re a great leader,” Trump said to Xi. “Sometimes people don’t like me saying it. But I say it anyway because it’s true.”

Traveling with him on the trip, he added, were his country’s top business executives who wanted to “pay respects to you and to China.”

Look closely at how events unfolded, however, and the sentiment was hardly reciprocated. Xi clearly now believes that China has the upper hand in their relationship.

Take Trump’s arrival. Waiting to greet him at the bottom of the steps to Air Force One was Han Zheng, China’s vice president.

The job title may sound impressive, like Trump dispatching Vice President JD Vance to welcome guests, but the Chinese position is ceremonial only. Han has no place in the top ranks of the Chinese Communist Party and is not in Xi’s inner circle.

TRUMP AND XI GO BIG ON THE POMP BUT LIGHT ON THE SUBSTANCE

The result pandered to Trump’s taste for the ceremonial but without carrying any real weight.

Longtime China watchers could only wince as the U.S. president, elected on a platform of standing up to Beijing, flattered his host.

“Understandable Pres. Trump wanted to be polite to Xi,” posted Nicholas Burns, former ambassador to China. “But gushing that he is a great leader strengthens him and weakens us.”

The Chinese readout from their private meeting made clear that Xi was intent on delivering a warning. “Stay away from Taiwan” was the implicit message.

“If it is handled well, bilateral relations can remain generally stable,” he told Trump, according to state media. “If it is not handled properly, the two countries could collide or even come into conflict, pushing the entire China-US relationship into a very dangerous situation.”

Trump has his own asks. Chief among them is his desire for China to reduce its $200 billion trade surplus with the U.S. by importing more American products, particularly Boeing planes, beef and soybeans.

Reports suggest that Xi agreed to buy more liquefied natural gas along with 200 Boeing 737 jets. That is small beer compared with Xi’s overall project to become the world’s factory, wiping out foreign producers with a program of massive domestic subsidies.

Instead, Xi used another of his favorite rhetorical tools to make the point that China and the United States are peers.

“Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations?” Xi asked Trump in the Great Hall of the People. 

Xi has used variations of this formulation for at least a decade, following Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, who popularized an example first used by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. His point, made with reference to China and the U.S., was that conflict inevitably arises when a rising power challenges an established one.

Xi, of course, has an answer to his own question.

The solution lies in a new paradigm of major-country solutions, suggesting that China is a peer of the U.S. in a two-superpower world.

Who knows what Trump made of the example, with its lessons about how the rise of Athens sent fear shuddering through Sparta, triggering the Peloponnesian wars? But he offered his own answer in his own way about whether Xi and China are equals.

“It is my honor to extend an invitation to you and Madam Peng to visit us at the White House this September 24, and we look forward to it,” he said at the banquet.

China welcomes Marco ‘Lubio’

You will by now know that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is traveling with Trump in China. What you may have forgotten is that then-Sen. Rubio earned himself a ban from Chinese soil in 2020 by championing human rights.

So how did Rubio get in? Not by any relaxation of Chinese sanctions on the former senator, but by the sort of diplomatic sleight of hand that shows exactly what Trump and his team are up against in their negotiations.

The Chinese government and official media simply changed the way they transliterated the first syllable of Rubio’s surname just before he took office last year, using a different Chinese character for “lu.”

No one by that name had been banned. Simple.

Trump’s unusual Truth silence

On Monday night, the president fired off 58 posts on Truth Social, taking potshots at political rivals, rehashing unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and whining that he wasn’t getting enough credit for renovating the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Since then, silence. Or near enough.

His account has posted only three times in the past 24 hours. The posts are video clips of his arrival in China and his formal welcome. No commentary, no digs, no attacks.

What’s going on? Natalie Harp, his faithful social media assistant, is on the trip, so there’s no reason why he couldn’t.

Has he, for once, realized that posting every thought that comes into his head might not be the best way to approach a sensitive diplomatic negotiation?

Or has the Secret Service impressed upon him that firing up his phone in China would be a gift to the country’s spies?

Mullah corner

Yesterday, we asked if anyone could explain the reference to “Mullah corner” in Politico‘s Playbook a few weeks ago, used as a subheading for a piece on Iran’s leaders. The answer appears to be no — none of you could.

So let Secrets explain. Muller Corner is a popular variety of yoghurt sold in Europe. It comes with a corner of fruit compote, which can be mixed into the yoghurt. It was available in the U.S. at one time, but appears not to have caught on.

“Mullah corner” is the sort of pun that Secrets enjoys, but we suspect it was lost on American readers.

Lunchtime reading

Why Trump’s spiritual adviser dedicated a golden statue to the President: Pastor Mark Burns: “I’m very close to the President, but I don’t know anybody in my circle who worships or honors Donald Trump as a god or any kind of deity. President Trump had nothing to do with the statue, as you and the media keep trying to portray that he did.”

The Benefits of Boundaries: Why thinking outside the box is not always the path to success. Fascinating review of “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better” by David Epstein.

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