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Don’t Look Now, But Here Comes Another Reassuring Pick From Trump.

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Don’t Look Now, But Here Comes Another Reassuring Pick From Trump.

Hey remember on Friday evening, when lots of people on Twitter freaked out that Trump was going to stir up a war with China by taking the phone call from the Taiwanese president? Remember how Trump had ruined U.S.-China relations, and he was this blundering oaf who was likely to accidentally start World War III? Remember all of those awful “Bull in a China Shop” puns and headlines? Yeah, this morning, Beijing seems pretty happy with the new ambassador.

China said on Wednesday the governor of the U.S. state of Iowa, Terry Branstad, was an “old friend” after a report that he had accepted an offer from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to become the next U.S. ambassador to China.

“We welcome him to play a greater role in advancing the development of China-U.S. relations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a daily press briefing when asked about the Bloomberg report.

Lu did not confirm the story and said China would work with whoever became ambassador.

Branstad called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “long-time friend” when Xi visited Iowa in February 2012, only nine months before he became the Chinese leader.

It suggests that Trump may be ready to take a less combative stance towards the world’s second-largest economy than many expected, trade experts and diplomats said.

From a 2013 article on Branstad:

Xi assumed the presidency in November, but he and Branstad go back to 1985, when Branstad was serving his first term as governor and Xi visited as part of a sister-state exchange program.

The two have taken to calling one another “old friends” and renewed their relationship in September 2011, when Branstad visited China; again in February, 2012, when Xi returned to Iowa; and yet again just two months ago when Branstad led another trade mission to China with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The Chinese leader has some really long-standing ties to Iowa. From the New York Times’ account of his visit in 2012:

Twenty-seven years ago, a young man named Xi Jinping, on an agricultural research trip from his home in China, came to rural eastern Iowa and slept in Eleanor and Thomas Dvorchak’s sons’ room. The boys had just gone off to college -- their room still stuffed with the things of childhood -- and Ms. Dvorchak said she felt bad. She had grown up reading Pearl S. Buck novels about the travails in rural China, and now here was a visitor, perhaps from that same hard place, and they had put him in there with the Star Trek action figures.

“He did not complain,” said Ms. Dvorchak, 72, who is now retired and living in Florida. “Everything, no matter what, was very acceptable to him -- he was humble.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Xi returned to Muscatine -- triumphantly this time, with an entourage and a room of his own -- as China’s vice president and heir apparent to the leadership of a rapidly rising world power. Seventeen people he met here in 1985, including the Dvorchaks, were invited to tea.

This means it’s time to stop the cries that the incoming Trump administration is blundering his way into a war with China and start up the cries that the incoming Trump administration sold out to China!