Chinese President Xi Jinping (2nd L) and his wife Peng Liyuan (1st L) pose for a photo with U.S. President Donald Trump (2nd R) and First Lady Melania Trump in the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the United States, April 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)
The just-concluded meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump was very positive as it helped achieve a much friendlier tone in China-U.S. ties, experts said.
The April 6-7 meeting, the first between the two leaders since Trump took office in January, was held at the Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Both sides hailed the meeting as "positive and fruitful" as the two leaders increased their mutual understanding and established personal friendship through face-to-face discussions of issues of mutual concern.
REDUCED CONCERNS ABOUT CHINA-U.S. TENSIONS
The meeting "helped achieve a much friendlier tone in relations between China and the new Trump administration," Ted Carpenter, senior fellow of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, told Xinhua in an interview.
"It alleviated concerns around the world that there might be a sharp increase in bilateral tensions," Carpenter added.
The meeting was "quite positive," Douglas Paal, vice president for studies and director of Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Xinhua.
"Though the real measure of the meeting will follow the next 10 months of work, but so far, so good," Paal said.
To Professor David Lampton, director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, the Xi-Trump meeting "went pretty well."
"This meeting seems to have gone better than most people would have forecasted here - in the United States," Lampton told Xinhua.
The two leaders "had an opportunity to come to know each other better, have a little more trust, but that it looks like there was the beginning of substance, although there is a long way to go," Lampton said.
Lampton further pointed out that Trump's acceptance of Xi's invitation to visit China within this year also "shows that there is a priority attached to managing this relationship."
"I think it's more significant that it shows this is an important relationship, and that he (Trump) wants to invest in it," he added.
