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Originally Posted by inv4zn
But this has to be taken at face value - yes, Trump has 'stood up' to China by calling them out, but he's also said exactly the opposite about China numerous times. He praised their handling of Covid, he said they 'showed the power of strength' with Tiananamen Square. Yes, he signed the Uighur bill, but the constant flip flop kinda makes you wonder if it's him 'doing good', or just 'doing what's convenient at the time.'
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Trump's approach to China has definitely changed over the course of his presidency. At first, he started out doing exactly what you have described -- befriending Xi and praising him and Xi's way of governing China. His praise for China's handling of COVID also came late in his presidency -- the beginning of his 4 year in the first term. However, I would view that early China COVID comment as something that should be brushed aside because you have to look at what the Trump administration was also doing at the time when the comment came out. But we will get back to that later.
I would view Trump's initial friendliness with China as a means of his businessman nature to butter up a customer in the lead up to a business deal. One of Trump's presidential goals has always been to alter the trade imbalance between US and China, and I'd say that at first, he was working hard to lure China in signing a trade deal with the US. But as the talks dragged on, China was once again sticking to its long game strategy. A lot of time was spent drafting out the language and specifics of the trade agreement, only to have China changed course 180° and asking to have a majority of the language and the terms re-negotiated. (For reference, this is how Communist China
always approach negotiations -- they are never sincere about it, only wishing to drag things out into a long game so that they can buy more time for themselves to improve the situation and their bargaining power on the end.) That's when the US tariffs started on China-made goods, and Trump's stance on China changed to something a lot more hawkish.
And it wasn't just the tariffs. The trade sanctions, esp on the technology front, is something that is absolutely crippling to China. Essentially, if the technology sanctions remain as they are now, the entire Chinese tech sector could collapse. In fact, any technology-related stuff in China could easily revert back 10 - 15 years as US bars all semiconductor-related sales to China. Can you imagine how China would function if China cannot obtain the necessary semiconductor technology that it needs to operate planes, (high speed) trains, cell phones and computer networks?
These scathing sanctions were coming into play while Trump praised China's COVID efforts. That is why I don't really take the praising all that seriously since the verbal praising doesn't really amount to anything substantial, while the actual sanctions are imposing a real material cost on China.
So as far as I'm concerned, Trump's goal with China has always remained the same -- that is, he wants to reap some significant material benefits out of it. The initial solution was to do it through trade deals, but when that proved to be no longer working, he changed the means to obtain that material benefit by pressuring them to sign that 1st phase trade agreement while crushing China's ability to unfairly compete with the US.
The Uighur and Hong Kong sanctions that Trump has imposed were not done because they were the right thing to do. They were done because they formed part of the comprehensive efforts to cripple and contain Communist China, to the benefit of the US. But I am not going complain about Trump's intentions when the net effect is something that would be good for the rest of the world.