Trump Calls Xi, with a Warning to Act Alone

choi

Mark Landler and Javier C Hernández, Trump Calls Xi with a Warning on North Korea; Preparing to Act Alone; Honeymoon over after a Flurry of Moves Angering China. New York Times, July 4, 2017 (one of the two front-page top reports).
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/ ... na-north-korea.html

Excerpt in the window of print: Ago-it-alone approach by the US may further antagonize Beijing.

Quote:

"President Trump, frustrated by China’s unwillingness to lean on North Korea, has told the Chinese leader that the United States is prepared to act on its own in pressuring the nuclear-armed government in Pyongyang, according to senior administration officials.  Mr Trump's warning, delivered in a cordial but blunt phone call on Sunday night to President Xi Jinping, came after a flurry of actions by the United States — selling weapons to Taiwan, threatening trade sanctions and branding China for human trafficking — that rankled the Chinese and left little doubt that the honeymoon between the two leaders was over.

"Mr Trump, one official said, now has fewer illusions that China will radically alter its approach to its reclusive neighbor, which is driven more by fear of a chaotic upheaval there than by concern about its nuclear and missile programs.

"Mr Xi, they [American officials who declined to be named] said, miscalculated what China needed to do to satisfy Mr Trump, thinking he could buy him off with a few highly visible measures, like banning coal purchases from the North. Mr Trump overvalued the personal touch by betting that a few hearty handshakes with Mr Xi would overcome China's deep-rooted resistance to pressuring North Korea.  'The Chinese tried to figure out what was the absolute minimum they needed to do,' said Bonnie S Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Washington and Beijing confirmed that Mr. Trump requested the call on Sunday.

"He [Trump] had a warmer call with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, who praised his decision to penalize Chinese entities accused of doing illicit business with the North, according to Kyodo News, a Japanese news agency.

"Some former officials said the tensions between Mr Trump and Mr Xi were neither new nor particularly troubling.  'We've had similar dynamics under Bush, Clinton and Obama,' said Jeffrey A Bader, a China adviser to President Barack Obama. 'It's not an either-or. We operate in a nether zone with the Chinese.'

Note:
(a) This report is about the same phone call in my July 3 posting titled 美中关系 -- and was written before the July 4 successful test by North Korea of intercontinental ballistic missile.
(b) Currently "Mark Landler is a White House correspondent at The New York Times." per nytimes.com.
(c) To date, cn.nytimes.com has not translated the report.
(d) This report is longish, with a lot that we are familiar with, such as arms sale to Taiwan, US destroyer into 12-nautical mile of a Paracel man-made island etc. There is no need to read the rest of this report.