China will never bow to Trump over trade

I think it is safe to say that Beijing is playng the long long game and will never sign a trade deal with Donald Trump. In negotiations there has to be compromise with each side stepping back a little from their entrenched positions and finding a way for everyone to be satisfied. But this is not the way China works. It never has. China will sign a deal when it gets everything it wants from the other side. No compromise. Not that long ago there was talk in Washington about renewed hopes of a trade deal with Beijing. Fresh talks began with high expectations of an agreement. Then the high hopes were lowered somewhat and now Trump has decided to return to the trade tariff war after realising that China was reneging on its agrement to buy more American produce. No surprise there. China is a Communist state, not a democracy, and Communist leaders never give in to pressure. It looks bad for their image. So a trade deal between Washington and Beijing was never really on the cards. So Trump has now announced a new 10 per cent round of tariffs on Chinese imports. Beijing won't care. The Chinese know that tariffs hurt American businesses just as much as it damages China's economy and so they will wait and do nothing. This is the way they have done business for centuries. They get what they want because they never give in. This is very frustrating for Trump, the deal-maker. He must have thought that the threat of more and more tariffs would finally persuade the Chinese to come to some form of arrangement. But every time you see President Xi Zinping in public, with that enigmatic smile, you know that inwardly he is laughing at his "friend" Trump. It's the same with the North Korea problem. Trump is supposedly a great friend of Kim Jong-un but actually the only person the North Korean leader listens to is Xi Zinping. The script he is following is written in Beijing. He can be all lovey-dovey with Trump but that was always Beijing's plan. Play Trump along, give him the publicity and public relations he so loves and then whip the carpet from under his feet and make him look like a fool. Beijing will use Kim Jong-un to ruin Trump's hopes of an historic nuclear disarmament deal and will also exploit the trade tariff war to push Trump into a corner. China is not America's friend and never will be.