Mar-o-Lago summit

Back in April, at the time of the US-Chinese summit in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, I said that US President Trump, inexperienced in foreign affairs, was badly misreading China’s President Xi Jinping.
In particular President Trump misread the Chinese President’s habitual courtesy as a concrete commitment that China would take action against North Korea in connection with that country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme, and as a sign of Chinese support for the US cruise missile attack on Syria’s Al-Shayrat air base.