To me it feels like Trump did it more or less intentionally. He seem to know that behind a stone faced facade, Xi is an anxious and insecure person — the same 7th grader he was when his family was purged.
In Western democracies, if you lose political power at worst you get indicted (and usually pardoned). Half of the country still likes you.
In China, you face serious prison time, your family's assets are seized, you're expelled from politics, and media runs a solid month of anti-you propaganda.
Harsh consequences for what many times is a roll of the dice.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. Could you please not routinely create accounts? That's not allowed here, except for occasionally when posting sensitive information. For more information on this, I've posted a bunch about it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...