The small town of Muscatine, Iowa, welcomed the next president of China this week for a casual visit and photo op(timum). Turns out Xi Jingping likes it here in the heartland, or did, when he last dropped by back in 1985, staying as a young man with a local family to take a bite of the American experience. It was not disclosed whether his initial American immersion had included the Farm Aid benefit concert, which was first staged that year and remains a going, annual concern.
These days China runs its own version of farm aid for American growers, buying more soybeans (Iowa’s number one crop) than any other nation on earth, except this one.
