Kevin Rudd Previews the Xi-Trump Summit
Interview on Charlie Rose
On April 4, 2017, Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd sat down with television host Charlie Rose to discuss the upcoming summit meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping. The two leaders are scheduled to meet for the first time on Thursday, April 6 and Friday, April 7 at Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
In the interview, Rudd discussed the interests and priorities that each side will bring to the summit, arguing that it will be “an opportunity for these two leaders to… start to get a measure of each other.”
"The big factor in the back of President Xi’s mind is that he’s got a big election coming up this year,” Rudd said, referring to the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China in November, which will determine who will join Xi in the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee for the next five years. For this reason, Rudd argued that Xi would like 2017 to be “a quiet year internationally because he’s got a lot [going] on domestically.”
For the two countries, advancing mutual interests while avoiding conflict will require managing a host of complicated economic and security issues, including U.S.-China trade relations, the South China Sea, and most importantly, how to address the North Korean nuclear program. Rudd believes that “there is an opportunity for some progress to happen on the trade front in particular.” (20 min. 50 sec.)