For Trump, a clash of deals, policy in China

BEIJING - Donald Trump calls China an 'enemy” of the United States, a threat and an international pariah whose modus operandi is to lie, cheat and steal - but for at least eight years his hotel chain has been trying to do business here.

Although negotiations have yet to bear fruit, Trump Hotels has made confident predictions this year about opening 20 or 30 luxury hotels in China.

It is an ambition that would involve the company in direct negotiations with a Communist Party that the president-elect professes to fundamentally distrust.

On Dec. 12, Trump tweeted that he would do 'no new deals” during his time in the White House. It is not clear what that means for Trump Hotels as a company, and both the Trump Organization and the Trump transition team declined to comment for this article.

If Trump Hotels goes ahead with its efforts to expand to China - or even if it only lays plans to do so after his term in office - it could hugely complicate one of the most important foreign policy relationships Trump will have to negotiate during his presidency.

And the suspicion that Trump as president might be trying to badger China or butter it up to promote his business there risks coloring perceptions of his every move in regard to Beijing - even those that are completely aboveboard.

'It's very hard for foreign politicians to do business in China,” said Liu Xuemei, vice president of New World Development's HuaMei Real Estate Development. 'If you want to do politics, don't try doing business in China.”

The complications for Trump of mixing business and politics were thrown into sharp relief Dec. 2 when he accepted a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, a move that infuriated the Chinese government in Beijing and overturned decades of diplomatic protocol.

A representative of the Trump Organization made a business trip to Taiwan in October, according to media reports linked to the woman's Facebook page. And the Taiwan News and other media outlets reported last month that someone professing to represent the company had held talks with the mayor of Taoyuan in September about an airport development project.

The Trump Organization said after Trump's phone call with Tsai that it had no plans for expansion in Taiwan and that there had been no authorized visits to push for a development project. Trump's business interests up to now have pointed in the other direction, with the money to be made in mainland China dwarfing any potential business deals with Taiwan.

Just before the U.S. election in October, Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger was quoted in Chinese news media as telling an Asia Pacific hospitality conference in Hong Kong that the group still was aiming to open Trump hotels in 20 to 30 cities in China and Scion hotels in more cities - but this time without specifying a target date.