Mr. President, Xi is not your friend. Nor is he anyone’s friend.
China is telling the western “barbarian” what he thinks the dumb barbarian wants to hear while he quietly views him with disdain just as they have for millennia.
Over 500 years ago when Europeans first had regular contact with China, they brought western inventions that were part of the European Renaissance of science, technology, and medicine. The Chinese had no equivalents and yet they considered these gifts “tributes.” They Chinese leadership arrogantly rejected even looking at them and didn’t want the Europeans teaching them anything because they thought they had all the knowledge worth knowing. The Europeans noted what we call today a monstrous superiority complex.
It seems not much has changed.
It’s not the Anglosphere use of “My Friend”. Trump is using it (in this case) as many Arab traders (and others) do; anyone that comes in the door is “my friend” - even while the guy saying “my friend” sells them a lame camel with no teeth and ulcerating wounds.