Is Trump Getting Played by Xi?

Excerpt

In a matter of hours, President Donald Trump will sit down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the first time in six years to determine whether America will remain a technological superpower or, if Xi gets his way, becomes an agrarian commune beholden to Beijing.

The stakes really are that high. Allow me to explain.

In November 2017, I accompanied President Trump on his state visit to Beijing, serving as his senior Asia staffer. One of our meetings was with then-Premier Li Keqiang, who delivered a pointed message that his boss, Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, apparently preferred not to deliver himself.

Addressing Trump from across the table, Premier Li painted a menacing picture of the not-so-distant future. China, he said, would completely dominate this century’s most important technologies, including artificial intelligence. The world would become more dependent on China than ever before. The United States, Li said, was destined to export little more to China than soybeans and corn. To add insult to injury, Li said Beijing would purchase substitutes for U.S. agriculture if the Communist regime was unhappy with Washington for one reason or another.

Matt Pottinger is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he chairs the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is co-founder and CEO of the research and advisory firm Garnaut Global.