China has always preferred to do diplomacy in quiet back rooms, far away from the public glare. “Nothing goes beyond this room,” was one of the first things Richard Nixon said to reassure Mao Zedong in 1972, according to a transcript of the historic meeting.
But against the backdrop of a similarly epoch-making diplomatic opening between the US and North Korea, Beijing’s behind-the-scenes role has been thrust into the limelight by US President Donald Trump.
It is a position where China is profoundly uncomfortable. “One side is whispering, and the other is saying everything through a bullhorn,” joked one foreign diplomat.
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