Xi-Trump summit’s cultural choreography masked geopolitical theatre: trade wars framed as tradition vs modernity
Original framing: “From beef ribs to a ‘heavenly’ walk: Xi-Trump summit symbolism underscored American power and Chinese tradition” — The Conversation - Global
The Xi-Trump summit’s choreography echoes centuries of tributary diplomacy, where China framed foreign relations as a hierarchy of civilizations, while the US invoked 'manifest destiny' to justify global dominance. The 19th-century 'unequal treaties' between Western powers and Qing China parallel today’s trade wars, where market access is demanded under threat of tariffs. Both nations’ narratives of exceptionalism—China’s 'century of humiliation' and America’s 'shining city on a hill'—are mobilised to justify current policies, obscuring the continuity of imperial logics in modern statecraft.
The Xi-Trump summit’s cultural choreography was a masterclass in geopolitical theatre, where the Temple of Heaven’s 'heavenly walk' and the beef ribs’ industrial provenance masked a brutal calculus of market access and technological dominance.
This performance relied on ahistorical framings of 'tradition' and 'power,' ignoring how both nations’ modern identities are rooted in centuries of imperial extraction—China’s tributary system and the US’s manifest destiny—now repackaged as 'civilizational harmony.' The marginalised voices erased by this spectacle—Uyghur poets, Black farmers, Congolese miners—are the true subjects of history, while the trickster figures (Hermes, Anansi) laugh at the absurdity of nations pretending their rituals are about anything but control. A systemic solution demands dismantling the symbolism-policy loop: replacing elite choreography with Indigenous protocols, enforcing transparent trade audits, and funding grassroots diplomacy that centres those most harmed by the current order. Without this, future summits will continue to trade empty gestures for tangible concessions, deepening the very asymmetries they pretend to transcend.