Now that the glaring face-to-face dissimilarities between the governments of the two most powerful nations on Earth have been fully exposed to the world on TV, we must prepare ourselves as best we can for what is to come.
Lives and economies depend on President Trump’s reactions to perceptions of how he and his ‘goontourage’ (‘goons’ in every sense of the word) performed and were received in Beijing.
We all know how difficult it is to predict what President Trump will do or say next. But, as with others, in this case, the general tenor of his response is bound to be determined largely by his perceptions of the extent to which whatever happened in Beijing reflected well or badly on him, personally.
Was sufficient deference shown, or homage paid, to him by his Chinese hosts? Was the respect conveyed authentic, contrived, or tongue-in-cheek?
His malignant narcissism and delusions of grandeur demand the right answers to these questions.
Below, we speculate on whether the skillful stage management of the event by the Chinese conveyed the messages they intended to get across without breaching the fragile ego defenses of the person they were dealing with.
The Chinese, of course, will have prepared that ground very thoroughly, that is, in full knowledge of the very thin ice on which any meeting with the current President of the US is conducted.
The Hair-Triggers of Malignant Narcissistic Rage
Even so, as an AI search quickly reveals, the hyper-vigilance and hyper-sensitivity of malignant narcissists to minute cues regarding the ways in which they are perceived and treated by others create significant margins for error. Their arousal, and what precisely will incur their wrath, can be very difficult to predict.
But once aroused, there is no such problem: ‘When they feel outmatched [or outsmarted or outmaneuvered], their reaction is not admiration, but intense envy, bitterness, and a desire to destroy the perceived threat’ to their ego’s integrity.
So, there is always significant attendant risk in demonstrating that you have the high ground – intellectually, diplomatically, and so on – no matter how subtly and cleverly that is done.
Malignant narcissists like Trump are easy but supremely knowing targets.
Again, the Chinese are bound to have been aware of this.
It is this volatile mix of hypersensitivity to real or imagined lack of respect or deference, combined with highly aggressive or defensive rage responses to perceived slight, and a complete lack of empathy that concerns us here.
In what follows, we consider briefly the extent to which President Trump’s meeting with President Xi in China provided sufficient cues to trigger his rage either at the time or, more likely, with the hindsight afforded by the reviews of his performance and treatment on social media.
Intellectual and Cultural Ascendency
In all of the encounters depicted on TV, the contrast between the two presidents could not have been starker.
In his opening speech, the taunting mention by President Xi of the Thucydides Trap will suffice as an example.
It was no doubt employed deliberately because it was a feature of Western (as opposed to Chinese) civilization that an educated and informed senior member of a Western government would be expected to be familiar with.
However, secure in the knowledge that the only ‘traps’ that exercise the mind of the President of the most powerful and warlike nation in human history are to be found on a golf course, the Chinese President and his advisers would have made the very safe assumption that Trump and his companions would be completely ignorant of and baffled by the reference.
It is a tactic worthy of applause because it conveys so clearly and parsimoniously that ‘we, on this side of the table, know more about your civilization and the lessons of history than you do. We are more intelligent and more cultured and more civilized than you will ever be.’
This demonstration was made so much easier by the obligingly low intellectual bar set by the Trump administration.
The glazed-eye – ‘stunned mullet’ (a particularly apt Australian colloquialism) – expressions on the faces of the Trump delegation on the other side of the table as they listened to President Xi said it all.
A Thucydides Trap indeed, in more ways than one.
Body Language and Other Signifiers of the Lesser
There is much that has already been written and said about the symbolic aspects of the meeting, not least from the moment of his arrival at Beijing airport, when the obvious omissions from the welcoming party became apparent.
For the purposes of this discussion, a few additional examples will suffice.
Why did a video of the solitary soldier at unflinching attention on the airport tarmac as Air Force One taxied engines roaring to its arrival bay go viral on the internet? Does it signify that people all over the world like to see what they interpret to be unyielding defiance to the US?
Were the hordes of cheering schoolgirls a deliberate poke in the eye for President Trump, as Parsons (2026) suggests they might have been?
Was the amount of stair climbing required of President Trump designed to demonstrate that his physical frailties were not to be outdone by his mental ones?
What did President Xi’s refusal to succumb to the fake bonhomie of Trump’s overdone handshake and would-be warm embrace signify?
On other occasions, was Trump’s body language deferential?
All of these incidents and many others like them demonstrated where the diplomatic savoir-faire lay.
Note further the contrast with President Putin’s reception a few days later, and the clearly relaxed, seemingly genuinely friendly interactions, as signified by the body language of both President Xi and President Putin.
Fallout
A measure of how little we have come to expect from the oxymoron of US diplomacy is Jeffrey Sachs’s statement of gratitude for the fact that neither Trump nor his henchmen appear to have insulted anyone during their visit.
But while no significant diplomatic damage appears to have been done by Trump et al. during their time in Beijing, our discussion to this point suggests that he will not be pleased with how his performance and treatment have been perceived and portrayed by others post hoc (e.g., Michael Hudson here).
For their part, the Chinese reiterated unambiguously how they believe international relations should be conducted, and how, if not managed very carefully, the question of Taiwan’s independence could lead to conflict between China and the US.
However, even with the most strenuous insulative or redactive efforts of his coterie in the White House (whose jobs, they know, will depend on it), it is inconceivable that slights such as those discussed briefly above will not get through to President Trump.
The fact that President Xi and his government did not have to stoop to direct personal attacks on President Trump and his gaggle of oligarchs to demonstrate their buffoonery will not matter. Their skillful crafting of the opportunities for the visible contrast between the representatives of the two governments to speak for itself, which was a far more dignified and effective way of emphasizing the stark differences, will rancor just as much or more with President Trump.
It also seems unlikely that Trump’s desire always to be seen to have ‘won’ – no matter how delusional this might be – will mollify his rage and assuage any destructive impulses arising from the slights that will be made apparent by hindsight and with the help of self-interested others.
The latter will be reassured by the fact that statements or promises made by the US government one day are easily overturned the next. They will also be reassured by the knowledge that once the informal messages from China have sunk in, President Trump will want to reassert himself and remind everyone of who is really in charge. He is likely to be particularly incensed by the clearly much warmer reception given to President Putin a few days later.
Taiwan and Israel will undoubtedly be at the front of the queue of those eager to help President Trump interpret his reception in China as suggested above. The fact that he was so patently outsmarted and outmaneuvered and ever so subtly, but no less effectively, shown up for what he is will simplify their job greatly.
His simmering fury at this humiliation will be channeled at the obvious targets by the likes of Netanyahu and the Israel lobby, the military industrial complex, and other corporations that profit from the endless wars waged or supported by the US.
No matter the illogicality of actions taken or their consequences, payback of some kind therefore seems inevitable, whether it be continued arms sales to Taiwan in defiance of China’s strong warning to desist, a resumption of the hot war with Iran (which shortly after his return to the US he threatened), or the intensification of aggression against the ever recalcitrant Cuba.