China's Trump troubles -- Xi discovers that president is not putty in his hands

Apparently, Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe never read James Hilton’s 1933 novel or saw the movie about the mythical Shangri-La.

His speech at this week’s Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore would have been jarringly out of place in Hilton’s utopian land of peace and tranquility nestled in the Tibetan highlands.

Wei’s words for the United States were anything but serene. “A fight?” he declared, “Ready. Bully us? No way.”

The unusually bellicose barrage from a senior Chinese official at a stately global forum was a bit of an eyebrow raiser, but not really much to worry about. In fact, it is yet another sign of how much Trump has flummoxed and confounded the boys from Beijing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping must really miss the heady days of 2017. At the 19th Party Congress, he spoke boldly of his vision for making China a global power. Later, he jetted off to Mar-a-Lago to tip champagne with the new American president. Trump spoke glowingly of future cooperation between the two countries, and Xi came away thinking he’d have no problem handling the novice president.