© Jonathan Ernst / ReutersU.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. first lady Melania visit the Forbidden City with China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, November 8, 2017
The Chinese leg of US President Donald Trump's grand Asian tour is expected to focus on North Korea and trade imbalances. But observers say a major agreement on rebalancing global power could be on the table as Beijing seeks respect for its growing clout.
During the two-night stay in Beijing, Trump will hold his third meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, following the Mar-a-Lago visit by Xi in April and G20 talks in June. The two men are arguably meeting at a low and a high point of their respective political careers. Trump, with his administration besieged by allegations of Russia collusion, has an approval rating of just 36 percent - the worst for a US president in modern history. In contrast, Xi was last month elevated to a status akin to that of the PRC's founding father, Mao Zedong, at a Communist Party congress which approved his second term as its leader.
Trump's marathon Asian tour is one of the greatest exercises of his personal diplomacy since entering the Oval Office. His previous stops were in Japan and South Korea, and in both countries he rallied the US allies against the threat posed by North Korea, touting multibillion-dollar purchases of US-made military equipment as improving the national security of the buyers and helping fix their trade imbalances with America.
Comment: Tillerson has always made it clear he wished to remake the State Department into a more corporate, more efficient structure. Naturally the entrenched careerists are making a fuss.