Xi Jinping allies talk to us

In Donald Trump’s first term, American commercial negotiators encountered a family interlocutor in China: Liu He, an English-speaking consultant with Harvard, Xi Jinping, who supported many of the same economic reforms that Washington had sought for years.

Now, like the USA and China Looking for a way back from a direct trade war, the Beijing delegation will be directed by Vice-Premier HeFeng, an Acolit XI that is expected to be expected to make a firm line of resistance to the Trump trade war.

“It will probably be a hardest interlocutor for the North -Americans,” said Andrew Gilholm, China’s chief of analysis in Consultatancy Control Riscks.

While Trump claimed on Thursday That “China wants to make an agreement,” Gilholm added that “China is willing and capable of taking political pain longer than the White House.”

XI Commercial Tsar will bring together Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent and United States commercial representative Jamieson Greer Saturday in Geneva In the first high -level face -to -face talks, from the Trump barrier of the “Liberation Day” last month’s rates. Since then, the United States and China have ruined taxes, threatening effective seizure between the two great economies of the world.

He, 70, is part of a main group of party appliances that his connection with XI dates for decades. He worked under XI in the province of Fujian and was elevated to Vice-Premier in March 2023 when Xi began his third unprecedented term as President of China.

Neil Thomas, an elite Chinese policy expert at the Asian Society Policy Institute, said that this close association was “positive” for negotiations. “It is important for Lifeng to know XI personally that these conversations be successful and to credibly represent the direction Xi Jinping wants to bring the relations of the United States-Thumbers,” said Thomas.

In the last year, his focus on foreign commitments has increased significantly, according to a Chinese political consultant who asked not to be named, as XI focused on leadership efforts. To face the endliness of economic growth.

He has held dozens of meetings with foreign officials and business leaders in recent months, including Goldman Sachs President John Waldron, Pfizer President Albert Bourla, Apple Tim Cook’s chief and Nvidia’s founder Jensen Huang.

Gradually, he has become more comfortable in these situations, according to a person who knew some of the meetings, and his courier has become “friendlier” as Beijing urged the US corporate leaders to help influence the white house in destruction of stresses.

At his meeting with Huang, the Vice -Master talked about his family’s Hokkien’s fund, a widely spoken language in Fujian and Taiwan, including by the technological billionaire, said the person.

But others who have known him said that, unlike Liu, he seems to speak little English. While many Chinese officials often refuse to speak foreign languages ​​in formal meetings, opting for a performer, many understand English.

He encounters the “Chinese archetypal technocrat”, kind but entrusted at China’s strengths and a little “alou”, according to a person who has known him.

Another entrepreneur who was known as described it as a “firm” supporter of state companies that make up the fund of economic policy promoted by the state of XI and a “black and white thinker”.

He studied economics and held higher positions in Fujian, as well as Tianjin, in the northeastern part of the country. Thomas said that his decades of experience in “economic issues of everyday life” and the academic background “are not always appreciated”. “He does not know the economic and commercial policy,” he added.

In 2014, she was elevated to the Vice President of the National Development and Reform Commission of China, the powerful state planner, according to Minxin Pei, publisher of China Leadership Monitor.

Three years later, he was promoted to President of the NDRC. During his time to the State Planner, he oversaw the first years of the Better and Road Infrastructure Plan, the XI Foreign Policy initiative.

At the end of 2023, the state media began to refer to herself in leadership in groups of communist party party more important for the supervision of the financial system, along with its government responsibilities leading the economic and commercial affairs with the United States.

In front of his meeting with Bessent and Greer, he will be supported by Liao Min, a Vice-Minister of Finance and a former member of the Liu negotiating team, and Li Chenggang, a former European education lawyer who last month was appointed Beijing’s representative in the World Trade Organization.

Both are fluent English speakers and are deeply aware of Beijing’s efforts to achieve their economy against possible trade war shocks.

However, the analysts expressed doubts about the possibilities of a breakthrough in Switzerland.

“All this will be decided over them (he and a twin),” Gilholm said. “Much refers to whether Trump will be willing to accept another narrow, fragile and deficit agreement” in the mold of the “Phase-one” agreement agreed during the first term of the President of the United States.

Although Beijing saw Bessent as a “ well -balanced professional ”, in contrast to some of Washington’s “ extreme falcons ”, it seems that the team had the opportunity to make only a “ initial commitment instead of a thorough negotiation, ” said Gao Jian, a Shanghai -based foreign policies expert with the Tsinghua University Security and International Strategy Center.

In front of the conversations, one of Beijing credit, he added, he added that “the consequence cannot buy peace or can commit respect.”

Additional Cheng Leng Reports in Hong Kong