In Good Company
Trump-Xi summit: The meeting is the message, says former US envoy
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Jon Huntsman, former US ambassador to Singapore, China and Russia, says the fact that presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are meeting is a positive thing in itself.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
You could say Jon Huntsman, one-time presidential hopeful, two-time governor of Utah and three-time ambassador – he was US envoy to Singapore, China and Russia – knows all about his country’s complicated relationship with China from the start.
In July 1971, when he was an 11-year-old visiting his father’s office in the West Wing of the White House, where the senior Huntsman was a staff member, then Colonel Alexander Haig, who was Henry Kissinger’s deputy at the time, asked if the youngster would like to say “hello” to the famed national security adviser, who sat upstairs.