A new book points to how best to handle alienated allies in a growing struggle.
In late 2017, I studied abroad at a Chinese think tank, the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS), while enrolled as a master’s candidate at Texas A&M University. At SIIS, Chinese professors often reiterated talking points that the Chinese Communist Party held as dogma.
Midway through my time at SIIS, U.S. President Donald Trump visited Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. During that visit, Trump showed Xi a video of his granddaughter Arabella Kushner singing a song in Mandarin to signify a new U.S.-China relationship. The professor for my “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” class declared this meeting and Arabella’s performance to be a fine example of how promising U.S.-China relations would be during the Trump presidency.
