Trump tells us: “When I said 15, I said 15 because I wanted to get to 21, 22, 20, you know? I loved the 20 number because it was a round number. Does that make sense? You know, but when I said 15 percent, you never get what you ask for, you know? And—especially with these guys. So if I’m asking for 15 percent, I don’t expect to get 15 percent. I’d like to get 20 or 21 percent. And I got that. I got it. It was a great negotiation.”30
Many U.S. workers would agree.
5
Boom Time and Beijing
On a Friday night in February of 2012, the Phoenix Suns of the National Basketball Association suffered through another visit to the Staples Center in Los Angeles. As usual, Kobe Bryant was the reason for their distress. The Lakers star scored 36 points as LA rolled to a 111–99 victory.1
A month earlier, Bryant had dropped 48 on the Suns in another Lakers victory. For a time he seemed to enjoy torturing Phoenix more than any other opponent. ESPN’s J. A. Adande found the reason: “I don’t like them,” Bryant said of the Suns. “Plain and simple, I do not like them. They used to whip us pretty good and used to let us know about it, and I. Will. Not. Forget. That.”2
Bryant used to call himself the Black Mamba to signify his fierce competitiveness. After exacting yet another measure of revenge on that February night in 2012, Bryant was called “Malicious Mamba” by a Phoenix sportswriter.3
That may have been taking the metaphor a little too far. But it turned out that there really was a malicious competitor in the Staples Center that night—one who knows something about torturing opponents. Just months before assuming the chairmanship of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping was wrapping up a tour of the United States by watching an NBA game. Before heading to Los Angeles International Airport for the long flight home, Xi enjoyed the Lakers victory as an honored guest.
The VIP treatment included greetings from local celebrities and some swag to take back to Beijing. According to the Associated Press, the communist strongman “entered the arena on a red carpet and sat above the official scorer’s table and the players’ benches. Magic Johnson and David Beckham also stopped by the suite to visit him, and mayor Antonio Villaraigosa presented the Chinese dignitary with a Lakers jersey with his name on the back.”4
Appearing without a tie, Xi seemed relaxed and friendly. His U.S. trip had been a smashing success, presenting Beijing’s next boss as a cheerful contrast to his dour predecessors. By all appearances a modernizing China would continue its progress toward creating a more open society. “A prosperous and stable China will not be a threat to any country,” Xi said a few hours before the game. “It will only be a positive force for world peace and development.”5
Xi’s polite hosts in Los Angeles probably didn’t realize that the man who was about to become the most important player in the Chinese regime was no reformer but an old-fashioned communist determined to reassert party control over every aspect of his country’s life. Today Xi has consolidated power and is the first Chinese communist boss since Mao to hold a lifetime term. He has developed the world’s most sophisticated surveillance state and currently holds an estimated one million ethnic minorities in concentration camps.6
But back in February 2012, civic leaders in Los Angeles weren’t the only ones who failed to appreciate the significance of Xi’s rise to power. Before arriving at the Lakers game, Xi had spent much of that Friday—and much of his American trip—with Vice President Joe Biden.
Biden and Xi attended a Friday luncheon at a Los Angeles trade forum. Outside, protesters deplored the Chinese government’s treatment of religious dissidents. But inside, the two leaders celebrated their burgeoning relationship. According to an AP report, Xi and Biden said “they had developed a close, personal friendship through visits.”7
Without question, the trade relationship had been growing, and not without benefits for Americans. U.S. consumers were enjoying lower prices on a multitude of products. Earlier in the week, Xi had visited the Port of Los Angeles. Most of the imports coming through America’s busiest port were now made in China.8
Xi said through a translator that the United States and China had moved from “mutual estrangement to a close exchange with increasingly intertwined interests.”9 It was true, but the fact that the interests of the United States and the Chinese regime were intertwined didn’t mean they were the same.
How exactly did America end up moving from estrangement to a close relationship with a communist dictatorship? It’s important to understand how we got here before we decide what kind of relationship we want with China in the future. Trump’s challenge to the U.S. political establishment’s consensus on China has raised important questions about the best ways to ensure American prosperity and peace.
By the 1970s, business leaders in various countries had been dreaming about the potential of the huge Chinese market for centuries. But when U.S. president Richard Nixon decided in 1971 to visit the communist-controlled nation the following year, it had less to do with economics than with grand strategy and politics.
The United States had been refusing to recognize the communist government ever since it seized power in 1949 and unleashed upon its people the most murderous reign in world history. In 1972 it was impossible to make a legitimate case on behalf of the thugs who ran the place, and so the opening to China was presented as a benefit to American interests. Nixon was trying to conclude a peace deal in Vietnam to enable a U.S. withdrawal. He thought China might help persuade the Vietnamese communists to keep their commitments. Nixon also wanted to get reelected in 1972 and craved diplomatic victories to present to voters. And he figured it was
