A reception made in China?

Great madness in the press everywhere... whether Xi Jinping received Donald Trump well or not. To be honest, Trump seemed satisfied, so why should we be upset? I do not propose to discuss the diplomatic signals given by China on this occasion, although, with reasonable rigorous documentation, they are not hard to understand. Moreover, if they were to give signals that no one can read, it would be of no use to them, and it would even go against the idea of communication.

But, I repeat, this is not the subject of the discussion. What really annoys me is the way many commentators of the event observed, following some news from the American press, that the Chinese president did not wait for the high American guest at the airport, but without these analyses having any reference to the protocol rules of the Chinese state or at least to some comparisons with other protocol situations, systematic comparisons, not just based on pictures. But you have to document yourself, you need to have some criteria, not just to ask an AI that, from time to time, slips you between sentences, probably to expose you, "can I help you with something?".

There was another category, intentionally more subtle, that of analysts who began by saying that the symbolism of Chinese protocol is misinterpreted because we interpret it according to our Western categories. There were heavy, Eastern matters, the Chinese empire is millennial... Of course, there were heavy matters, but if you explicitly ask – and with examples – those commentators what they will ultimately say, they could not explain it to you. Unfortunately, as in many areas of international relations theory, opinion makers, the academic world, and practitioners of diplomatic protocol have three different agendas, which they do not bother to align. And public communication in general is full of experts who talk to us about Iran, China, etc., always starting with the magic formula "unlike other so-called experts, I actually studied...", so that after this captatio benevolentiae, they can hit you, of course, with an analysis taken from Wikipedia or worse.

And so, what do we say about China? Romanians have always had a dual relationship, not necessarily ambiguous, with China. In a way, they have always been somewhat sympathetic to us. Politically, before 1989, they were our friends from within the circle of so-called friends. Now, it is really unclear what is happening. Do the Chinese want something from us? I don't know. But it seems that we certainly do not know what we want from the Chinese. And we sink into a wisdom of that... Chinese kind: we make no decision and we will see how things evolve. And things will settle again without us.

According to the latest INSCOP figures, about 53% of Romanians believe we have excellent and good relations with China, 62% with the USA (for comparison), 72% with Germany, 19% with Russia (also for comparison). For some, it is China before 1989. For others, it is today's China. For even more others, it is those Chinese machines and computers that have increasingly replaced our consumption of Japanese and Korean ones. China is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.

Some nostalgic people lament the Cuban candies from the communist era. Damn communists, they brought candies, they wouldn't have brought cigars from Cuba... Well, unlike them, today's Chinese seem to bring you anything. Almost to spite global capitalism and to show that in the depths of commerce lies the label made in PRC or made in China. Which no longer means what it meant, stereotypically, 50 years ago. That's why I think that when you organize a lavish show to welcome the leader of the free world, you should show the proper respect to the high guest, but also show what you are capable of organizing.

In the end, however, if you ask me what I think about how President Trump was received in China, I will answer you like Prime Minister Zhou Enlai when he was asked about the French Revolution: too little time has passed for us to form an opinion.