Xi Jinping's White House visit: Shifting Chinese views & skirting Iran oil sanctions

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0:10Ideas about how to make sense of the incomprehensible. Most of science in general is actually intuitable. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Today on State of the World, China's leader pays a visit to Washington.

0:33You're listening to State of the World from NPR. A Human Perspective on Global Events. It's Wednesday, September 23rd. I'm Christine Arismeth. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is headed to the White House to meet President Trump on Thursday. Iran will likely be on the agenda. More about that in a moment. First, the world's eyes will be on that meeting of the two leaders. But what's the view of the U.S. in general from the perspective of ordinary Chinese citizens? China is America's biggest competitor, after all. and a lot has changed since Xi Jinping's last visits to the U.S. To find out, we sent our China correspondent, Jennifer Pack, to Shanghai.

1:17On a sunny Saturday afternoon, half a dozen Chinese professionals gather in central Shanghai to practice English. It's an English-speaking club. Most of them were born in the 1980s and 90s, when China was just starting to open up to the outside world. Participant Julia Wang says she has visited the U.S. for work, Chicago, and thinks it's fine.

1:44The U.S. is indeed a more developed country, but compared to China, she says, and specifically Shanghai, I don't think there's a huge difference. Another participant, Cross Zhao, works in IT, an area of competition between China and the U.S. No doubt, he says, the U.S. is at the frontier in AI and other tech. But today, if you compare internet companies in China and the U.S., he says, Chinese firms show a much stronger ability to meticulously iterate and refine their products. Here on the ground, American dominance is fading.

2:23Seattle native Damon Hansen, who's leading the English discussion group, says attitudes have shifted since he first arrived in China in 2013. Now, he says, fewer Chinese he meets want to study in the U.S. or even visit. And I find this to be true also for my mother-in-law, because I married a Chinese person and mother-in-law is always like worried about violence and guns and stuff because she sees that on Chinese social media. Chinese public sentiment towards the U.S. has been dipping for the last decade since Trump was first elected. Nick Zeller is with the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which tracks Chinese public opinion.

2:58Chinese people tend to rank the United States very low in favorability, the low 30s out of 100. And he says almost three quarters of Chinese people they've surveyed see the U.S. as a national security threat. Always the top is interference in cross-strait relations with Taiwan and then U.S. interference in international trade. So tariffs, trade war. And he says younger Chinese under 40 are far more hawkish towards the U.S. than their parents' generation. Though that doesn't mean American soft power has lost its charm entirely. On a bustling Shanghai street filled with bars, 20-something Charlie Ma is sipping gin and tonic with friends.

3:37He says he's ready to quit his job as a flight attendant to work in the U.S. He knows a visa is difficult to get. I really like American culture, he says, especially singers like Mariah Carey. I love R &B music. I really want to go to the U.S. He isn't deterred even after I told him that, just like in China, young people in America are anxious about finding jobs.

4:05The sources of anxiety are just different. In China, anxiety comes from intense competition, he says. The effort we put in doesn't match the income we receive. But in the U.S., the anxiety is more about feeling like you're not doing as well as before. And I've met plenty of people like him since Trump's first term, who, if they have the means and visa permitting, still want to go to the U.S. It is contradictory, says Zeller. Chinese people may see the U.S. as a threat to China, as a country. And that has less direct bearing on do I like U.S. cultural products, do I want to go to the U.S. to study.

4:43The frustration is that both are true. The good news, he says, most Chinese people they survey want their government to cooperate with the U.S. in trade, tech, and security. Jennifer Pack, NPR News, Shanghai.

5:00Among the likely topics at Xi and Trump's White House meeting, Iran and oil. China is Tehran's biggest customer, buying over 80 percent of Iran's oil. That trade was disrupted when the U.S. imposed a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. But Beijing isn't backing down. As NPR's Rob Schmitz reports, China's quietly evading the blockade. And that could undercut Trump as he seeks Beijing's help with the conflict. In normal times, that is when the U.S. is not blockading Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, China imports Iranian oil through a careful step-by-step method of circumventing U.S. sanctions.

5:42Ships mask their identities and offload Iranian crew to other vessels off the coast of places like Malaysia so that these China-bound ships can say their oil does not come from Iran. And then these shipments go to independent refineries or teapot refineries. That's Ahmed Abado of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Because these refineries are out of the United States' reach and out of the sanctions system. As Abudo explains, these teapot refineries, mainly off the coast of China's Shandong province, then offload the Iranian oil at a discount of$8 to$10 a barrel. It's a heck of a deal for Beijing, and that's why Abudo says these refineries account for up to a quarter of all oil imported into China.

6:26But obviously now this oil has dried up. That's because of the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Beijing has gotten around this blockade by sending tankers with mostly Saudi oil through the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the southern tip of the Red Sea, a treacherous journey that passes territory controlled by the Houthis, who have attacked and sunk vessels with missiles and drones. But the Iranian-backed group has left the Chinese alone, says Abadoa. From what we know, many ships raise the Chinese flag on them or declare through private channels that they have Chinese nationals on board. and this would be enough for the Houthis to avoid targeting these ships.

7:08It's a reminder of how much influence China has in the region. But does Beijing have enough influence to persuade the U.S. to stop its blockade on the Strait of Hormuz? With just 12 percent of China's oil imports coming, or as is the case now, not coming from Iran, Henry Tugendhat of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says China can afford to wait. In terms of does China need this ceasefire right away, I think it's shown that it can wait a little bit if it thinks that Iran can get a stronger negotiating position against the U.S. in the run-up to the midterms. On the eve of the summit between Xi Jinping and President Trump, Tugendhat says Trump seems more eager to resolve the conflict with Iran to help Republicans in November.

7:49He says Xi Jinping, on the other hand, appears fine with giving up Iranian oil in the short term to let the pressure on the U.S. build. After all, China relies primarily on coal to fuel its increasingly electrified economy, with more than 65 percent of new car sales in China last month registered as electric vehicles. Imported oil is becoming less important in China. And according to Bill Figueroa, international relations professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, as the U.S. war with Iran continues, China's image as a force of stability in the region grows. They're building bridges and infrastructure rather than destroying it.

8:25So, you know, there is definitely a substantial difference there. And I think one that, especially right now, you know, China is kind of looking like the better, the more balanced and the more stable partner of the two. And, says Figueroa, the longer the U.S. is involved in what he calls a military quagmire with Iran, the better off China's image as a stable regional partner will be. Rob Schmitz, NPR News.

8:54That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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