Trump hands Xi Jinping a win in Singapore – and may have handed all of Asia to China

The Chinese were clearly the big winners in the “summit of the century”, the meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the island city state of Singapore, through which about a third of the world’s shipping moves to and from ports in Japan, South Korea, China – Hong Kong, too.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, was overjoyed about the results, in which Trump said the United States might eventually withdraw its troops from South Korea and called off annual military exercises. “It is fair to say that the relevant approach and initiative proposed by China”, said Wang, “played a positive and constructive role in getting the situation on the peninsula to where it is now.”

Indeed, if there was any individual winner, besides Kim, that honour had to go to China’s President Xi Jinping. With an abrupt drawdown in US strength in the South, and maybe Japan as well, the Chinese would have clear sailing ahead for expanding influence and authority in East Asia, from the Korean peninsula to the South China Sea.