Source: Al Jazeera<\/p>\n
Shanghai, China –<\/strong>\u00a0A trade deficit that US President Donald Trump has called “embarrassing” and the increasing threat posed by North Korea will be atop the agenda on his first official visit to Beijing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Trump has embarked on a 12-day trip to the Asia-Pacific and will arrive in China just two weeks after the end of the 19th Communist Party congress, which saw President Xi Jinping\u00a0consolidate his power<\/a>.<\/p>\n Describing Trump’s tour as a “historic opportunity”, China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai,\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the “state visit-plus”\u00a0will include a banquet, a military honour guard, and other “special arrangements”. While the Chinese government is expected to give Trump lavish treatment, many Chinese are less excited about his visit.<\/p>\n “Lots of Chinese people don’t like Trump, and he doesn’t like us,” Zhang Xing, a 24-year-old woman who works for a Spanish trading company and is originally from Xi’an, home of China’s famous terracotta army and capital of Shaanxi province in central China, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Zhang and many others interviewed by Al Jazeera vividly recalled\u00a0Trump’s anti-China rhetoric<\/a>\u00a0during the presidential campaign, but also said they believed overall relations between the two world powers will continue to improve, partly because the US now relies on China’s support to rein in North Korea – one of the main reasons for the talks.<\/p>\n On Tuesday in South Korea, Trump made rare conciliatory comments towards the North, inviting officials to\u00a0“come to the table”<\/a>\u00a0to negotiate over its nuclear weapons. However, he also underscored the US’ “unparalleled” military strength\u00a0that he would unleash “if need be”.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Pyongyang’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests led the UN Security Council to unanimously approve two rounds of sanctions. So far, China’s support has proven vital for the council, but also for North Korea.<\/p>\n Beijing is traditionally seen as the pariah state’s closest ally and its most important trade partner. In 2016, 90 percent\u00a0of Pyongyang’s trade was with China, but the nuclear and missile tests have angered its neighbour.<\/p>\n “China has made clear if America starts the war, they will stand by North Korea – but not if North Korea starts it,” said Alexander Gillespie, a senior lecturer in international law at New Zealand’s Waikato University.<\/p>\n Some experts believe that Xi is the key to solving the crisis –\u00a0the only one Kim<\/a>, who has had some of his closest allies and family members assassinated, will listen to. Others, however, say Xi’s influence is overrated.<\/p>\n “Xi is – in my opinion – the most powerful man in the world, but I doubt that means much to Kim,” Gillespie said. Regardless of whether Kim listens to Xi, Trump will need China’s support if he wants to ramp up UN sanctions.<\/p>\n Ambassador Cui said the country was taking measures to implement the\u00a0recent set of sanctions<\/a>, despite “high costs for China itself”. In September, China’s imports from North Korea dropped by about 38 percent compared to August.<\/p>\n But Cui also underlined that solving the issue wasn’t up to China.<\/p>\n “It is clear that if only China is making efforts, while others are doing things that could lead to escalation of tensions, this issue would not be solved, and it would become even more difficult, and the end result would hurt everybody’s interest,” he said.<\/p>\n Trump previously threatened to unleash “fire and fury<\/a>” and to “totally destroy” North Korea.<\/p>\n Many Chinese seem to agree with their ambassador to the US, saying despite Trump’s hopes, the key to solving the issue does not lie with China.<\/p>\n “We can try to influence North Korea a little bit, but in the end it comes down to the US,” said Deng Xianchuan, a 31-year-old chemical engineer from southwest China’s Sichuan province.<\/p>\n The issue was created by the US and North Korea, he said, while China was merely an outsider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Al Jazeera Shanghai, China –\u00a0A trade deficit that US President Donald Trump has called “embarrassing” and the increasing threat posed by North Korea will be atop the agenda on his first official visit to Beijing on Wednesday. Trump has embarked on a 12-day trip to the Asia-Pacific and will arrive in China just two weeks after the end of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":989,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988\/revisions\/989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}