Why does Donald Trump look so at home in China?

The US president spent day one of his summit in Beijing basking in rigid pageantry, heroically managing not to offend his hosts and offering the verdict: “China is beautiful.”

A man who has shown authoritarian yearnings in his own country – discrediting elections, cowing universities, accusing journalists of treason – visibly delighted in one where the strongman fantasy is made flesh.

Not for the first time, he was far better behaved in one of the world’s most repressive regimes than when he shows up in Europe’s democracies like a human wrecking ball.

There has been a strange, uncharacteristic deference and circumspection about Trump since he left Washington. Unusually, he did not speak to reporters on the long Air Force One flight nor did he post about his meeting with President Xi Jinping on his Truth Social platform.

Climbing out of the presidential limousine at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday morning, Trump fiddled with his jacket, as if nervous, eventually deciding to button it.

He had previously predicted that Xi “will give me a big, fat hug” on arrival. It wasn’t quite that but there was a warm handshake and, as they walked a red carpet, the septuagenarians of similar stature looked like birds of a feather.

The US president surely loved the cool, clinical pomp of the arrival ceremony: martial music, troops with bayoneted rifles and ceremonial uniforms marching in lockstep and, as The Star-Spangled Banner played, a 21-gun salute echoing across Tiananmen Square.

It was worth remembering that last year Trump organised a military parade in Washington on his own birthday – 14 June, one day before Xi’s – and has previously spoken with awe about Chinese soldiers being of the same height. “If they put their helmets down, you could have played pool on the top of their heads,” he once said.

Trump stopped to applaud children who energetically waved bouquets of flowers and US flags with the kind of theatrical adulation he does not get at home. He mused later: “I was particularly impressed by those children. They were happy. They were beautiful.”

When the two delegations sat down for two hours of talks around a giant table, Trump delivered the sort of fawning praise he is accustomed to receiving at his own cabinet meetings, telling Xi: “You’re a great leader. Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway, because it’s true. I only say the truth … It’s an honour to be your friend.”

Xi might be only the second most powerful man in the world but he seemed to be in the driving seat. Later he struck a less convivial note, warning about the fate of Taiwan: “If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire US-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation.”

Surely Donald “I am the Storm” Trump would fight back, delivering the kind of tongue-lashing that he gives Iran, proving that the US never gets pushed around? No. When reporters shouted questions about Taiwan, he ignored them.

And later, at a state banquet in the Great Hall, when Xi toasted that “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand”, the teetotal Trump was so polite that he took a sip of wine. His own remarks were mild and meek, sticking to his rather dull script – no weave this time – while inviting Xi to the White House in September.

The dinner was also notable for a menu that felt like fusion cuisine to appease Trump’s unadventurous palate: lobster in tomato soup, crispy beef ribs, Beijing roast duck, stewed seasonal vegetables, slow-cooked salmon in mustard sauce, pan-fried pork bun and trumpet shell-shaped pastry, tiramisu and fruits and ice-cream.

And then there were the guests, including the manosphere bros Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller, and the tech bros Tim Cook of Apple, Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Elon Musk of Tesla, who responded to each request for a photo by pulling a funny face. Also present: Trump’s son Eric, who is now running the family business, the sort of conflict of interest that has become routine in the Trump era. Imagine if Joe Biden had brought along Hunter.

Trump is forced to deal with a buccaneering, messy democracy where people can mock him, talk back at him and, as we saw in 2020, throw him out of office. In China he sees an orderly country that, while offering KFC, Starbucks and his beloved McDonald’s, abolished the two-term limit on the presidency and makes liberal use of facial recognition technology at subway stations and elsewhere.

In 2024 he said wistfully of Xi: “He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not.”

So it is that Trump has come to Beijing with an agenda remarkable only for the puniness of its ambition. No one in the US delegation even pretends any more to talk about structural reform in China or to push for democracy and human rights or to join forces against the climate crisis. Trump needs Xi to dig him out of a hole in Iran and buy some Boeing planes so he can revive his miserable polling numbers.

President Richard Nixon called his 1972 visit to China “the week that changed the world”. Few are likely to make that claim for Trump in 2026, nor to write an opera about it. Not so long ago, such meetings were palpably a study in contrast between democrat and autocrat. Now it is hard to tell the two apart.