" Josh Rogin: When the vice president met Putin and Xi .  "

" Vice President Mike Pence was not planning to meet with the leaders of Russia or China during his Asia trip this month, but they sought him out anyway. In several conversations with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Pence delivered messages on election interference, North Korea and the trade dispute, and also set the stage for big showdowns this week when President Donald Trump meets the same leaders in Argentina.

Pence stood in for Trump at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders meeting in Papua, New Guinea. The trip was billed as a reassurance tour wherein the vice president would reinforce with allies the Indo-Pacific strategy Trump announced at these events last year. The meetings with Russian and Chinese leaders were impromptu encounters but had real substance.

Pence and Putin had three short conversations in Singapore. First, they exchanged pleasantries at the ASEAN gala dinner. (Putin arrived late.) The following day, before the plenary, Putin tapped Pence on the shoulder as he walked to his seat. The press, still in the room, caught Pence looking sternly at Putin for the minute or so they talked. Putin offered Russian help to fight the California wildfires. Pence confirmed to Putin that Trump would meet him at the upcoming Group of 20 meeting in Argentina.

When the plenary ended, the two men huddled in the corner for about 15 minutes as staff, security and translators swarmed around them. Pence decided to confront Putin about Russia's interference in U.S. democracy.

"So I looked at him and I said, 'We know what happened in 2016,' " Pence told me in an interview. "And I said, 'As the president has told you, we're not having it.' "

Putin denied that Russia had done anything wrong, but Pence stuck to his guns.

"And I said, 'Mr. President, I'm very aware of what you've said about that, but I'm telling you we're not having it,' " Pence said. "I wanted to reiterate what the president has said. I thought it was important he hear that from the vice president, too."

Pence then told Putin it was extremely important that Russia enforce U.N. sanctions on Pyongyang in the crucial period before the next U.S.-North Korea summit. Putin raised several issues he wants to discuss with Trump in Argentina, including Syria and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which Trump has said the United States is withdrawing from.

Later that day, Chinese Premier Li caught Pence while the two were walking off stage after taking the ASEAN "family photo." Li wanted to talk about the ongoing U.S.-China trade war.

Li told Pence to remember that China is a "developing nation," meaning it should get special treatment on trade. "And we got down to the corner, and we just stopped for a minute, and I just looked at him and said, 'Things have got to change,' " Pence told me.

Li was taken aback, with a look of surprise on his face. Pence then delivered the same message he had told me at the start of the trip: that the G-20 was China's best (if not last) chance to come to the table with a real offer to end its unfair trade and industrial practices.

"You should encourage President Xi to take full advantage of the opportunity in Argentina," Pence said he told Li.

Pence delivered a similar message directly to Xi on Nov. 17 in Papua New Guinea, when the two leaders were seated near each other at the APEC gala. "I said, 'The president asked me to tell you he hopes you can have a conversation about opening markets,' " Pence told me.

Pence walked a fine line when dealing with the leaders of Russia and China. He had to deliver tough messages clearly, keep the door open for dialogue and progress and not show any daylight between himself and his boss. Throughout the trip, whenever Trump spoke about China, Pence's staff quickly incorporated those remarks into Pence's speeches.

"Pence did what President Donald Trump rarely does: Stay on message, calm nervous security partners and clearly lay out a vision for American foreign policy," wrote Bloomberg's Toluse Olorunnipa. "While Asian leaders listened closely to Pence, many were waiting to see if Trump would do something to contradict him."

Everybody talking to Pence understood that he represented only what Trump's position was that day and that Trump could change his mind the following day for any reason. There's a level of Trump's unpredictability that even Pence's Spartan-like discipline can never overcome.

But don't believe reports that world leaders were upset Trump wasn't there. They were fine dealing with Pence, and Pence was in his element. Trump sees the boring work of diplomacy as a nuisance. Perhaps sending Pence in his place is a win-win arrangement for both of them -- and the country as well. "

" The Real China Challenge: Managing Its Decline . "

" Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first tout as countries of the future. "


By Bret Stephens

" In 2009, The Economist wrote about an up-and-coming global power: Brazil. Its economy, the magazine suggested, would soon overtake that of France or the U.K. as the world’s fifth largest. São Paulo would be the world’s fifth-richest city. Vast new reserves of offshore oil would provide an added boost, complemented by the country’s robust and sophisticated manufacturing sector.

To illustrate the point, the magazine’s cover featured a picture of Rio de Janeiro’s “Christ the Redeemer” statue taking off from its mountaintop as if it were a rocket.

The rocket never reached orbit. Brazil’s economy is now limping its way out of the worst recession in its history. The murder rate — 175 people per day in 2017 — is at a record high. One former president is in jail, another was impeached. The incoming president is an admirer of the country’s old military dictatorship, only he thinks it should have killed the people it tortured.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first tout as countries of the future.

I thought about The Economist story while reading a deeply reported and thought-provoking series in The Times about another country of the future: China. The phrase “rise of China” has now become so commonplace that we treat it more as a fact of nature than as a prediction of a very familiar sort — one made erroneously about the Soviet Union in the 1950s and ’60s; about Japan in the ’70s and ’80s; and about the European Union in the ’90s and ’00s.


Why should current clichés regarding China’s supposed rise be any different?

One answer suggested by The Times’s series is that Beijing has ignored orthodox economic nostrums about the need for ever-greater market liberalization and fewer state controls while still managing to thrive. There’s something to that. Quantity has a quality all its own, goes the saying, and Beijing can supply quantity like no other country save for India.

It can also supply cruelty. The Laogai Research Foundation estimates the number of forced laborers in China to be in the millions. In a superb piece of journalism last month in Vox, Rossalyn Warren traced a desperate message found in a Walmart purse to the Yingshan prison in southern China. The note described 14-hour workdays and beatings.

Tyrannies do not work in the long run. But they do know how to make people work in the short term.

Yet even with the advantages of scale and force, China isn’t working. In 2014, a year in which Beijing posted an official growth rate of 7.3 percent (as compared to 2.6 percent in the U.S.) China lost $324 billion to capital flight, according to a UBS estimate. In 2015, the figure more than doubled, to $676 billion, according to the Institute of International Finance. In 2016: $725 billion.

Yes, some of the money goes toward productive investments abroad, not just apartments in Sydney or bank accounts in Liechtenstein. But then there’s the fact that some 46 percent of wealthy Chinese wish to emigrate, most of them to the United States. If China’s prospects are as bright as China boosters think they are, why do China’s most fortunate sons and daughters see their future elsewhere?

Maybe that’s because individual rights, democratic choices, rule of law, competitive markets, high levels of transparency, low levels of government corruption, independent news sources, and freedoms of thought, conscience and speech are assets beyond price —ones that Westerners tend to value too lightly while foolishly assuming others do as well. If you define power as the power to attract and not simply compel, then Beijing — with its dystopian vision to fully surveil and rate all citizens by 2020 — isn’t a rising power at all. It’s a collapsing one.

Maybe it’s also because the picture China presents the world about its economic strengths is misleading. China’s economy has made its strides atop a pile of public and private debt now $34 trillion high. Beijing claimed 6.9 percent growth in 2017, but Chinese statistics are next to worthless — artifacts of propaganda instead of productivity. The rise of China has also been the rise of Chinese make-believe.

All this may seem an excessively glum take. What about the skyscrapers of Guangzhou? What about the world-beating test scores of students in Shanghai? What about the hundreds of millions brought out of subsistence living and raised to, or above, the middle class?

China’s rise is not some kind of mirage. But what matters is the future, not the past, and whether a nation built on constraining the freedoms granted to ordinary people can outpace, outsmart, and outlast another nation built on defending and broadening those freedoms. On current evidence, that seems utterly doubtful.


American policymakers and pundits often talk about the challenge of managing China’s rise. They had better start thinking instead of the challenge of managing its decline, beginning at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires this weekend. Japan and Europe went gently into eclipse, and the Soviet Union surrendered without a fight (at least until its current revanchist phase).

Will China’s current leadership accept the possibility of their own decline so philosophically, after having convinced themselves of their rapid rise to primacy? Nobody should bet on it. A wounded tiger is rarely a placid one.  "

" US and China reach 90-day trade tariff ceasefire after China agrees to buy ‘very substantial’ amount of American goods . "

" Donald Trump to hold off on raising the tariff rate on US$200 billion of Chinese imports for 90 days to allow for talks to address US concerns on Chinese trade practises, the White House says

Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump agreed to a 90-day trade truce to allow for further talks to address US concerns after China committed to buying a “very substantial” amount of American exports, the White House said in a statement late on Saturday.

Chinese officials said that the country would buy more US products in an effort to narrow the wide bilateral trade gap.

At the same time, Trump agreed to postpone a scheduled increase in tariffs next month on US$200 billion in Chinese imports while talks to address American concerns about China’s trade practices took place.

If there is no deal at the end of the 90-day grace period, the US will increase tariffs on the US$200 billion of goods from 10 per cent to 25 per cent. The negotiations, and therefore the 90 days, start immediately.

“President Trump and President Xi have agreed to immediately begin negotiations on structural changes with respect to forced technology transfer, intellectual property protection, non-tariff barriers, cyber intrusions and cybertheft, services and agriculture,” the White House said.

“Both parties agree that they will endeavour to have this transaction completed within the next 90 days. If at the end of this period of time, the parties are unable to reach an agreement, the 10 per cent tariffs will be raised to 25 per cent.”

As part of the ceasefire deal, China agreed to buy a “very substantial amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other product from the United States to reduce the trade imbalance between our two countries. China has agreed to start purchasing agricultural product from our farmers immediately.”

However, the exact value of the purchases had not yet been agreed, the White House said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China had agreed to import more US goods “according to its domestic market and people’s demands”, which will include “buying more products from the US to gradually address the trade imbalance”.

Wang also said that China would gradually solve the “legitimate concerns” of the US side, but did not elaborate.

Wang said the two sides would continue negotiations with the goal of “removing of all additional tariffs”.

Xi and Trump had “friendly and candid” talks over dinner and reached an “important consensus”, with China agreeing to buy more from the US to address the bilateral trade imbalance, the Chinese foreign minister said.

Dinner discussions about de-escalating tensions between the world's two largest economies lasted an hour longer than expected.

Both sides appeared satisfied at the end of the gathering, and applause was heard in the room as the dinner drew to a close.

Reuters reported that Trump hailed his agreement with Xi.

“It’s an incredible deal,” Trump said on Air Force One. “What I’d be doing is holding back on tariffs. China will be opening up. China will be getting rid of tariffs.”

He said that under the deal China would buy a “tremendous amount of agricultural and other product” from the United States. “It’ll have an incredibly positive impact on farming.”

In China, a commentary widely carried by state media and official government social media accounts, said China had subdivided 53 “structural issues” raised by the US into 142 items, and classified them as either “agreeable for mutual concession”, “negotiable” or “unacceptable”. It added that the US had also “positively addressed” what China considered “long overdue” issues unresolved by Washington.

G20 leaders reaffirm ‘rules-based international order’
In addition to trade, Trump and Xi discussed other issues, including the US opioid crisis and Taiwan. Xi agreed to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance, after complaints that inadequate regulations on pharmaceutical and chemical production were hampering America’s efforts to stem the flow of synthetic opioids from China.

The decision, which the US described as a “wonderful humanitarian gesture” and listed as the first item on the White House statement, means that those selling the drug to the US “will be subject to China’s maximum penalty under the law”.

Meanwhile, Wang said the US had agreed to stick to the one-China policy regarding Taiwan, although the White House’s statement did not mention the island.

The US has in the past acknowledged the one-China position without recognising Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan.

Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a breakaway province, views the island as a core interest and has warned the US against supporting pro-independence forces and demanded that it cut off military exchanges.

China also expressed support for Trump meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a second time, with Wang adding that the US had expressed its appreciation of China’s role in helping to push the North towards denuclearisation.

The trade deal also gave new hope to a potential merger of semiconductor firms.

Xi said he was “open to approving” the acquisition by US semiconductor firm Qualcomm of Dutch chip maker NXP, according to the White House statement. China had blocked the deal on antitrust grounds after and US and European officials had approved it. Qualcomm abandoned the proposed purchase after China rejected it, so it is unclear whether it would resume interest in the deal even if China were to reverse its position.

Amid reports of the US tightening its visa policy for Chinese scholars and students, Xinhua quoted Trump as saying to Xi that the US welcomed Chinese students studying in America. "