For Chinese officials, Xi Jinping's first face-to-face encounter with Donald Trump last week in Florida was a success principally because it was not a disaster.
From the perspective of China's risk-averse communist rulers, the April 6-7 summit was always going to be a high-risk gambit. But with an increasing realisation in both Washington and Beijing that the current imbalances in their trade and investment relationship are not sustainable, meeting Mr Trump on his home turf was a risk Mr Xi had to take.
The alternative was a possible all-out trade war between the world's two largest economies just as the Chinese president prepares for a second five-year term with a revamped leadership team. During such "selection years", economic and social stability is the paramount concern for the ruling Chinese Communist party.
Like so many other capitals around the world, including Washington, Beijing wants to know if Mr Trump is crazy like a fox — or just crazy. Either way, it is an academic distinction. Whether the US president ultimately upends the world's most consequential bilateral relationship by accident or by design, the damage will be done.
Mr Xi saw his meeting with Mr Trump as a critical opportunity to argue the case for stability in Sino-US relations. As the Chinese president said in Florida: "There are a thousand reasons to get the bilateral relationship right and not one reason to spoil it."
The Chinese government's worst fears, however, seemed to be coming true almost as soon as the meeting at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort was confirmed.
On March 31, a Chinese vice foreign minister was scheduled to brief foreign reporters about his government's expectations for a positive and constructive meeting between the two presidents.
But just hours before Zheng Zeguang did so, Mr Trump tweeted his prediction for a "very difficult" encounter with Mr Xi over "massive trade deficits and job losses". Mr Zheng then spent a good part of his briefing parrying questions about the US president's tweet.
Officials in Beijing scrambled to contact trusted American intermediaries. According to people familiar with the calls, the message was "please ask your president to stop tweeting" about the meeting. "How seriously should we take his tweets?" one bewildered Chinese diplomat asked the Financial Times. "He's not like any other leader we have ever dealt with."
In the end, @realDonaldTrump went easy on his Chinese counterpart. During Mr Xi's two days at Mar-a-Lago, he merely tweeted a video showing his granddaughter charming the Chinese president with her Mandarin language skills.
It initially appeared that young Arabella Kushner's performance might be the highlight of a summit otherwise overshadowed by the US missile attack on Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.
Mr Xi and Mr Trump did not take questions from the press. They did not even release a bland communiqué for the world to parse. But it eventually emerged that the two sides had agreed to a rushed 100-day negotiation over some of their thorniest trade and investment disputes.
It is in this particular arena that the alpha male drama that began in Florida will ultimately play out.
Mr Trump's treasury secretary, commerce secretary and incoming trade representative now have a unique opportunity to narrow America's $347bn trade deficit in goods with its biggest trading partner, while also pressing for increased market access in China for US service-sector companies.
America's service sector companies have a substantial surplus in their trade with world's second-largest economy — and would enjoy an even bigger one if they could operate as freely in China as Chinese companies do in the US.
If Mr Xi is prepared to pay a high price for stability in Sino-US affairs, says one multinational executive who is keenly awaiting the outcome of the 100-day talks, the lesson will be that pressuring China can work. The world will soon find out whether there is indeed a method in Mr Trump's apparent madness.
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