In terms of deliverables, the Trump-Xi Summit disappointed already-low expectations. The most important announcement was a two-month extension, to January, of the Busan Framework established last October — far shorter than the one- or two-year extension Chinese negotiators had been seeking. Chinese commentary struggles to specifically locate the “constructive” in all of this, and dwells on the meeting’s “bridging” function — maintaining a baseline throughout the US midterms, which are considered an unpredictable moment in the domestic political cycle and a near-term risk factor for the relationship.
In official commentary, symbolism and language are the focus, even if difficult questions lurk beneath. CCTV’s Yuyuan Tantian blog approvingly quoted Trump’s invocation of “gung-ho” as a symbol of Sino-US cooperation.1 The term originated in a wartime mistranslation of China’s Industrial Cooperatives (工合, for short) as “work together”, and a similar linguistic elasticity appears in Yuyuan Ta…