In the first term of Donald Trump, American commercial negotiators met a familiar interlocutor in China: Liu He, an English advisor educated by Harvard of Xi Jinping who supported many of the same economic reforms that Washington was looking for for years.
Now, like the United States and China Look for a return path of a pure and simple trade war, the Beijing delegation will be led by Vice-President He Lifeng, a acolyte XI which expected a solid line of resistance to the Trump trade war.
“He will probably be a more difficult interlocutor for Americans,” said Andrew Gilholm, China's analysis manager at Consultancy Control Risks.
While Trump claimed Thursday This “China wants to conclude an agreement a lot,” Gilholm added that “voluntary China capable of taking the political pain longer than the White House”.
The XI commercial tsar will meet the secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and the US trade representative Jamieson Greer In Geneva on Saturday In the first high -level face -to -face interviews, since Trump's “Liberation Day” Trump's Trump dam last month. Since then, the United States and China have taken samples, threatening an effective embargo between the two largest economies in the world.
He, 70, is part of a central group of party apparatus whose connection to XI dates back decades. He worked under Xi in the province of Fujian and was raised to the vice-president in March 2023 when Xi began his third unprecedented term of five years as Chinese president.
Neil Thomas, an expert in Chinese elite policy to the reflection group on the Asia Society Policy Institute, said this close association was “positive” for negotiations. “It is important that he personally knows XI so that these discussions succeed and credibly represent the direction that Xi Jinping wants to take American-Chinese relations,” said Thomas.
During the last year, his concentration on foreign commitments has increased clearly, according to a Chinese political consultant who asked not to be appointed, while XI refocused the management efforts on approach the slowdown in economic growth.
He has held dozens of meetings with foreign officials and business leaders in recent months, notably the president of Goldman Sachs, John Waldron, the president of Pfizer Albert Bourla, the boss of Apple Tim Cook and the founder of Nvidia Jensen Huang.
He was gradually published more comfortable in these situations, according to a person familiar with some of the meetings, and his messaging has become “more friendly”, because Beijing urged American business leaders to influence the White House in the de -escalation of tensions.
During his meeting with Huang, the vice -president discussed the history of his family's Hokkien – a largely spoken language in Fujian and Taiwan, including by the technological billionaire, said the person.
But others who met him said that unlike Liu, he seems to speak little English. While many Chinese officials often refuse to talk about foreign languages during formal meetings, opting for an interpreter, many understand English.
He appears to be the “Chinese archetypical technocrat”, friendly, but confident of the forces of China and somewhat “distant”, according to a person who met him.
Another familiar businessman describes him as a “faithful” supporter of public enterprises that form the foundation of economic policy focused on XI and a “black and white thinker”.
He studied the economy and occupied management positions in Fujian as well as in Tianjin, in the northeast of the country. His decades of experience in “daily economic problems” and academic history is “not always appreciated,” said Thomas. “He is not familiar with economic and commercial policy,” he added.
In 2014, it was raised to the vice-president of the National Commission for Development and Reform of China, the powerful state planner, according to Minxin Pei, editor-in-chief of China Leadership Monitor.
Three years later, he was promoted to president of the NDRC. During his stay at the state planner, he supervised the first years of the belt and road infrastructure plan, the XI foreign policy initiative.
At the end of 2023, the state media began to refer to the holding of management positions in the main groups of the Communist Party for the surveillance of the financial system, in addition to its government responsibilities leading economic and commercial affairs with the United States.
Before his meeting with Bessent and Greer, he will be supported by Liao Min, Vice-Minister of Finance and former member of the Liu negotiation team, and Li Chenggang, a former European educated lawyer who was appointed last month of the World Beijing Trade Organization.
The two are commonly the English speakers and deeply know Beijing's efforts to prepare its economy against the potential shocks of the trade war.
However, analysts expressed doubt about the chances of a breakthrough in Switzerland.
“All this will be decided above them (him and bessen),” said Gilholm. “This comes down to if Trump will be willing to accept another close, fragile and focusing agreement” in the “phase one” agreement agreed during the first mandate of the American president.
While Beijing considered to be besing as a “well -balanced professional” – unlike some of the “extreme hawks” in Washington – he seemed to have been authorized to carry out an “initial commitment rather than an in -depth negotiation,” said Gao Jian, an expert in foreign policy based in Shanghai with the Center for International Safety and Tsinghua University.
Before the talks, one of the Beijing Crédos, he added, was that “appeasement cannot buy peace, or cannot compromise respect”.
Additional reports by Cheng Leng in Hong Kong
