Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Donald Trump questions US commitment to 'One China' policy

President-elect says he sees no reason why the US should continuing
abiding by the policy unless a bargain is reached with Beijing involving trade

Tom Phillips in Beijing
Monday 12 December 2016 13.09 AEDT

[to the end]

“I think they will be genuinely befuddled and just thinking: ‘How do we deal with this guy? What’s the playbook?’”

“The overall consequence of all of this is that it’s going to make the region a lot more uncertain and the temperature is going to be a lot higher.”

The Chinese government offered no immediate reaction to Trump’s comments. But in an editorial the Global Times, a fervently nationalistic party-run tabloid, warned him the “one China” policy was “not for sale”.

The newspaper claimed Trump’s “inexperience” meant he was easily “influenced or even manipulated by hardliners around him”.

“China should be prepared to accompany Trump on a roller coaster ride for Sino-US relations. We must buckle up, as should others around the world,” it said.

Schell said it was hard to predict how Beijing might respond to Trump’s latest gambit.

“I don’t know what Beijing is going to make of this because they have always dealt with these very square, proper people like Obama and Hillary Clinton who have always sought to keep the US policy relatively constant. And here you have someone who is doing the absolute opposite,” he said.

“I think they will be very careful about responding because in a certain sense they are meeting a brinksman just like themselves….[and] I don’t know what a brinksman or a bully does when they meet another brinksman and a bully. [Violence] would be one option, but very often one of them backs down.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/12/donald-trump-questions-us-commitment-to-one-china-policy

.. guessing China won't be the one, but whatever happens it will be spun that they were the ones who backed down ..

ah, one avenue open to the Trump spin vehicle would be re issues on which talks have been going on for some time,
such as trade .. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/business/international/china-and-us-say-theyve-made-strides-in-trade-talks.html ..
if any of those issues could be resolved within a Trump presidency it would be open for him to say, "hey, we did it! .. and we got a much better deal than any other administration would have achieved because me and my people are the best negotiators ever!!!!" .. leaving no way at all to know such a statement was true or not .. hmm, maybe except perhaps by people involved in the negotiation, or any on top of it now, who could say, "well, when Trump became president the issues were these, and the negotiations on them were at this stage, and this is what we ended up with." .. lots of room there for Trump to claim credit for something even worse than could have eventuated under Hillary.

i wouldn't think China would give anything to Trump they wouldn't give to any other administration .. but really there would be little way to be sure, if any, one way or the other.