Donald Trump imagined a China meeting with President Xi, but his brain does not reflect reality- Trump is delusional!

New York Times echo analysis: By Anton Trioanovski 

Trump Calls Xi a ‘Friend.’ But He Left China Without Any Breakthroughs.

The lack of concrete agreements with Beijing shows the risks of Donald Trump’s personality-driven foreign policy, which rests on the belief that he can defend U.S. interests through charm and force of will.

Trump’s lavishing of praise on President Xi was in contrast to the Chinese leader’s more measured tone.

There was a vague agreement that China would purchase Boeing jets and more American soybeans. There was discussion about Iran and opening the Strait of Hormuz, and a nod to other issues, like cracking down on chemicals used to make fentanyl.

But President Trump departed Beijing on Friday with almost nothing concrete to show for his two-day summit with President Xi Jinping of China. After months of buildup and a delay necessitated by Mr. Trump’s difficulty in extricating the United States from the war with Iran, the summit ended with no major public progress on the Middle East, trade, Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence or any of the other myriad issues that are sources of friction between the world’s two superpowers.

Instead, Trump seemed intent on a different kind of diplomacy, forging a personal bond with a Chinese leader who appeared far more focused on advancing his own nation’s strategic agenda.

Trump toasted President Xi Jinping as “my friend” at their banquet in Beijing on Thursday and said he had “become really a friend” when they sat down before the cameras on Friday.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, asked at a briefing during the summit whether Mr. Xi considered Trump a friend, responded with boilerplate: “the two sides exchanged views on major issues.”

Trump has hailed the summit in Beijing as a major success, highlighting the personal bond he says he has built with China’s longtime leader. But the feeling is not necessarily mutual, as evidenced by Mr. Xi’s more measured tone and the lack of clarity about any major agreements.

Orville Schell, vice president of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, called the summit “quite insubstantial and aspirational.”

“We have Trump dreaming out loud,” he said.

The mismatch shows the risks in Trump’s personality-driven foreign policy, his bet that he can solve the world’s problems and defend American interests by his charm and force of will. 

In Mr. Xi, the U.S. president faced a counterpart this week well versed in Trump’s desire for praise and pomp, and with an apparent strategy for how to exploit it.

The result, analysts said, was a summit that illustrated the growing confidence of China on the world stage alongside a strategically muddled U.S. foreign policy under Trump.

Nevetheless, the summit might yet come to be seen as the start of a shift toward a more stable relationship between the United States and China. 

But, few of even the limited accomplishments that Trump spoke about were confirmed by China, while Mr. Xi set the tone with an assertive posture over Taiwan.

Experts say there is no question that personal chemistry between leaders is crucial, especially when authoritarian, centralized countries like China are involved.

Susan L. Shirk, a senior State Department Asia specialist in the 1990s, said President Bill Clinton worked hard to establish a rapport with Jiang Zemin, the Chinese leader at the time; he would keep his eyes on Mr. Jiang even during the translation of his remarks, Ms. Shirk recalled.

But Trump’s lavishing of praise on Mr. Xi was different, Ms. Shirk said, especially in contrast to the Chinese leader’s more restrained language. At times it was “embarrassing,” she said, like when Trump told the Fox (Fake❗)News host (aka Trump's shadow echo) Sean Hannity in an interview during the summit that Mr. Xi was “tall, very tall,” and then veered into ethnic stereotyping: “especially for this country, because they tend to be a little bit shorter.”

“He was flattering him excessively and it was clearly not working,” said Ms. Shirk, a professor at the University of California, San Diego. “The lack of preparation created this kind of void of substance in the meeting, and the Chinese stepped into that void.”

Trump has already discovered that the power of his personality has limits in foreign policy. In his first term, he failed to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons despite asserting that he and Kim Jong-un, the country’s leader, “fell in love.” 🙄

In his second term, he has failed to stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine despite a dozen phone calls with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and their summit in Alaska.

Still, asked to name the summit’s most important achievement for the United States, Mr. Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier: “I think the most important thing is relationship. It’s all about relationship.”

“It sounds like something that doesn’t mean anything, but it’s everything,” Mr. Trump said.

China, too, hailed the personal aspect of the visit. Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said after the summit that “head-of-state diplomacy is the ‘guiding star’” of “the most important and complex bilateral relationship in the world.” He said Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi spent nearly nine hours together and had been able “to achieve overall stability after experiencing ups and downs.”

But China entered the meeting with a broader agenda, while deflating U.S. claims of success. Mr. Xi warned Mr. Trump about the threat of a clash over Taiwan, even as Mr. Trump said nothing about the island democracy until after Air Force One took off from Beijing. Mr. Wang also suggested that the achievements Trump had trumpeted — for example, China buying as many as 750 “big beautiful” Boeing jets — were not a done deal. On Saturday, China said it would acquire some aircraft, but stopped short of confirming a specific purchase of Boeing planes.

“The working teams of both sides are still discussing the relevant details and will finalize the results as soon as possible,” Mr. Wang said, referring to the economic talks between the United States and China.

The disjointed dynamic stood in contrast to Mr. Xi’s relationship with the leader he does call a friend: Mr. Putin. Their summits have featured much warmer displays than the pomp in Beijing this week, including the time they made pancakes and drank vodka in 2018. Their meetings often include joint statements, including the one in 2022, just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that their countries’ friendship had “no limits.”

Putin will visit China next week, the Kremlin said on Saturday. The announcement was a reminder that Mr. Xi still looks to Russia as a crucial geopolitical partner and helps enable Russia’s war with trade and technology — a relationship that many in Washington see as a threat to American security.

Trump could see Mr. Xi again at a gathering of Asia and Pacific region leaders in Shenzhen, China, in November and at the Group of 20 summit that Trump will host at his Doral golf resort near Miami in December. Trump also said Mr. Xi would visit the United States on Sept. 24, a sign that the high-level diplomacy that Trump has kicked off with China may only be beginning.

Whether all the meetings will yield benefits for the United States is yet to be seen, analysts said, though few dispute that any U.S. president needs to build a relationship with his Chinese counterpart. Mr. Schell, the Asia Society expert, cautioned that Mr. Xi had little track record of making concessions to the United States.

If concrete agreements do “come as a result of the bonhomie of this summit, I think we might be able to call it something of an inflection point,” Mr. Schell said. “That has not yet happened.”

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Chris Buckley from Taipei, Taiwan. Ruoxin Zhang contributed research.

China arrests Cardinal Zen- Cruel reminder about the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary

Opinion:  The arrest of a 90-year-old cardinal signals China’s crackdown — and its fear:  By Nancy Pelosi

Echo opinion published in The Washington Postt

Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, is speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On June 4, the world will mark 33 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre*.

On that day — a date that is seared into the consciousness of all freedom-loving people — we remember one of the greatest acts of political courage in modern times. Beijing’s horrific slaughter of its own citizens crushed the protest but could not extinguish the flame of freedom that burned in their hearts.

Yet, a generation later, Beijing is fighting harder than ever to extinguish that flame. Indeed, over the past 30 years, the Chinese Communist Party’s appalling human rights record and repression of political freedoms have only worsened.

Zen is an outspoken champion of democracy in the Catholic community, advocating for religious liberty in Hong Kong and, in 2016, urging the Vatican to reject an agreement that would give the People’s Republic of China say over the ordination of bishops. But he is not only a leader of Hong Kong’s and other Chinese Catholics. To a broader audience, he is a critical voice of conscience: an embodiment of moral fortitude, who has been a constant presence as Hong Kong has led a decades-long pursuit of the freedoms promised with the handover from British rule.

Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun**

On Wednesday, Beijing launched its latest assault: ordering the arrest of 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong. Zen was charged with “colluding with foreign forces,” after serving as a trustee of a now-disbanded relief fund providing criminal defense to those charged in cases involving freedom of speech and expression. Four colleagues — barrister Margaret Ng and singer-activist Denise Ho, scholar Hui Po-keung and former Legislative Council member Cyd Ho — were also rounded up under the same pretext.

These arrests are part of a severe crackdown enabled by the 2020, so-called national security law, designed to eliminate all dissent in Hong Kong. Beijing has used this law to crush freedom of the press, assembly and speech, arresting activists including Joshua Wong, Benny Tai, Jimmy Lai, Lee Cheuk Yan, Gwyneth Ho and Carol Ng. Now, empowered by the installation of another staunchly pro-Beijing leader in Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party has trained its sights on Zen and his colleagues.

In the lead-up to the 1997 transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom, the Chinese government promised “a high degree of autonomy” for the territory: with an independent executive, legislature and judiciary; freedom of speech, the press, assembly and religion; a path to universal suffrage; and an assurance that China would not interfere in the affairs that Hong Kong administers under the Basic Law. But nearly 25 years later, China’s pledges have been utterly abandoned. Any pretense that Hong Kong’s rights would be respected has been shattered by violence and intimidation.

Zen’s arrest is one of the clearest signs yet of Beijing’s worsening crackdown as Hong Kong fights for its freedoms — and of Beijing’s growing desperation and fear that it is losing this fight. Indeed, this act of persecution is a sign of weakness, not a show of strength.

As speaker of the House, I have been blessed to witness Cardinal Zen’s courage and commitment up close. When I met with him in Hong Kong in 2015, he warned that “one country, two systems” was in great peril. And when we met most recently — in 2020, in the U.S. Capitol, where I awarded him the Wei Jingsheng Chinese Democracy Champion Prize — he again spoke powerfully about China’s broken promises.

Zen and three of his colleagues have been released on bail, but the charges remain in force, with each facing the prospect of life in prison. We must all condemn their arrests, which are an affront to religious freedom, political freedoms and human rights. As I have said before, if we do not speak out for human rights in China because of commercial interests, we lose all moral authority to speak out on human rights anywhere in the world.

1989 protests in Tiananmen Square

Congress, on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, has always supported Hong Kong in its fight for its freedoms. In 2019, a bipartisan Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which is now law. We have held Beijing accountable for its human rights abuses, passing legislation to counter horrific campaigns against Uyghurs, Tibetans, activists on the mainland and many others — and we will continue to do so, until these abuses cease.

For the people of Hong Kong — and for all yearning for freedom around the world — the entire international community has a responsibility to forcefully speak out against these arrests and demand that the CCP end its abuses. The world is watching.

*  Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the Square.

**  HONG KONG, May 11 (Reuters) - Cardinal Joseph Zen, one of the most senior Catholic clerics in Asia, and three others who helped run a now-disbanded Hong Kong fund for protesters were arrested on charges of "collusion with foreign forces," and later released on bail.

Zen, a 90-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, was questioned for several hours on Wednesday at the Chai Wan Police Station, close to his church residence, before being released on police bail. The silver-haired Zen, wearing a white clerical collar, left without making any comment to the media.

COVID-19 is not going away! Wuhan redux- vaccinate-vaccinate-vaccinate

So, Senator Lindsey Graham is more proof about the infectious virulence of the dangerous COVID-19 virus.  Meanwhile, another outbreak is reported in Wuhan, China, where the source of the virus was first reported, in 2019.

Graham is the first vaccinated senator to test positive for COVID-19
Associated Press report by Meg Kinnard

China orders mass testing in Wuhan as COVID outbreak spreads- reported in the Associated Press.

Wuhan, a provincial capital of 11 million people located in central China, is the latest city to undergo city-wide testing. 

Three cases were confirmed there on Monday, its first non-imported cases in more than a year.

They were among 90 new (Maine Writer- reported !) cases confirmed nationwide the previous day, the National Health Commission said Tuesday. Of those, 61 cases were locally spread ones and 29 among people who had recently arrived from abroad.

Most of the local cases are still in Jiangsu province, where an outbreak started at the airport in Nanjing, the provincial capital, and has spread to other parts of he province and beyond. Authorities reported 45 new cases, five in Nanjing and 40 in the city of Yangzhou, 105 kilometers (65 miles) away, where a second round of mass testing was underway.

Five other provinces and the cities of Beijing and Shanghai reported new local cases in the single digits. In Shanghai, the nation’s largest city, a driver working at one of its two main airports tested positive. Beijing has reported a total of five cases in recent days.

The Nanjing outbreak, which has been traced to the delta variant, is the source of the cases in most other places. Separately, delta variant outbreaks in two other places have been linked to neighboring Myanmar, which has seen a sharp rise in infections.

A nurse takes throat swab samples in new round of COVID-19 testing in Nanjing city, in eastern China's Jiangsu province on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. The current coronavirus outbreaks in China, while still in the hundreds (Maine Writer- "reported") - of cases in total, have spread much more widely than previous ones, reaching multiple provinces and cities including the capital, Beijing. Many of the cases have been identified as the highly contagious delta variant that is driving a resurgence in many countries. (Chinatopix via AP)

An outbreak in Zhengzhou, a city hit by flooding that killed about 300 people last month, started with people who arrived from Myanmar by air. A third outbreak, the one that started the earliest, spilled into Yunnan province from its border with Myanmar.

Government-affiliated scientists have said that Chinese vaccines are less effective against the new strains of the coronavirus but still offer some protection. Only Chinese vaccines are currently being given in China, where authorities say more than 1.6 billion doses have been administered.

#vaccinationworks