Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon delivered an unusually positive speech in China Tuesday.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon delivered an unusually positive speech in China Tuesday.
“There isn’ t a world leader [President Donald Trump] respects more than the President of China, ” Bannon explained at an investment event in Hong Kong, according to Channel News Asia correspondent Wei Du.
Trump hammered China on the campaign trail, but he softened his tone after he entered the Oval Office. After Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in April, the president spoke very highly of his Chinese counterpart. “He is a good man. He is a very good man and I got to know him very well, ” Trump said later that month.
As the North Korea threat has grown more serious with the regime’s successful tests of an intercontinental ballistic missile and a staged thermonuclear device, Trump’s frustration with China has resurfaced. The Trump administration has increasingly targeted Chinese strategic interests, from the South China Sea to bilateral trade.
Trump, however, has continued to show his admiration for China’s president, stating in July that “he’s a very talented man. I think he’s a very good man. He loves China, I can tell you. He loves China. He wants to do what’s right for China.”
Bannon also spoke in positive terms about China during his speech, even going so far as to state that the Chinese “way of running their economic system is quite brilliant.
