Donald Trump and Xi Jinping went out of their way to make their latest summit in Washington look warm. The White House ceremony was choreographed for smiles, handshakes and talk of cooperation, while Xi brought a particularly cuddly reminder of a very different era in US-China relations -- two giant pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, bound for Zoo Atlanta. Xi called the pandas an “envoy of friendship” and said they would arrive within days.
The gesture recalls the extraordinary role pandas played when the US President Richard Nixon opened the door to China in 1972. But the current relationship is a much harder one. The summit produced no diplomatic breakthrough, while Washington and Beijing merely extended their trade truce by two months, leaving the most difficult economic disputes for later.
