The signal sent by Trump is that he will take a call from whomever he wants
That doesn’t change anything about the fact that it creates strong internal pressure on Chinese decision makers to answer the action in a way that doesn’t result in them losing face in front of their citizens.
If true that’s mainly an argument against making pointless precommitments you can’t possibly enforce. As it happens, I doubt Chinese pay all that much attention to these kinds of diplomatic bugbears.
As it happens, I doubt Chinese pay all that much attention to these kinds of diplomatic bugbears.
Why do you doubt it?
The fact that they took a US military drone in tit-for-tat, suggests that they do pay attention.
If the Chinese wanted it they could leak all those background checks for the US security clearances to Wikileaks or do any number of actions to retaliate more forcefully than just taking a drone as a symbolic action against the symbolic action of a phone call.
That doesn’t change anything about the fact that it creates strong internal pressure on Chinese decision makers to answer the action in a way that doesn’t result in them losing face in front of their citizens.
If true that’s mainly an argument against making pointless precommitments you can’t possibly enforce. As it happens, I doubt Chinese pay all that much attention to these kinds of diplomatic bugbears.
Why do you doubt it?
The fact that they took a US military drone in tit-for-tat, suggests that they do pay attention.
If the Chinese wanted it they could leak all those background checks for the US security clearances to Wikileaks or do any number of actions to retaliate more forcefully than just taking a drone as a symbolic action against the symbolic action of a phone call.
I meant the Chinese public. The actual public of most countries is not all that engaged in the ins and outs of these things.
The Chinese public knows what the Chinese media tells them. It’s also very nationalistic.