The United States is stepping up pressure on China across multiple strategic fronts, in moves analysts say could strengthen US President Donald Trump’s hand ahead of his planned high-stakes mid-May meeting with President Xi Jinping. But they cautioned that Beijing was likely to remain unfazed because it had already adapted to earlier curbs by reducing its reliance on the American market. US lawmakers in the House Foreign Affairs Committee have advanced 20 new export control measures this month...
China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, says the US naval blockade undermines an "already fragile ceasefire".
Hong Kong holds the unwanted distinction of being the most US-sanctioned territory in China, with more than 300 entities blacklisted by Washington in a bid to curb Beijing’s technological rise. But the government maintains that a backlash from Washington will not stop Hong Kong from becoming an international technology hub, in line with an initiative that seeks to bypass technological containment through deepened partnerships with the mainland. Anchored by the cross-border Hetao Shenzhen-Hong...
In Beijing, strategic elites have started to see world politics as sliding from the Spring and Autumn period to the Warring States era. However, if China believes the old order is falling apart, its future will depend less on economic power and more on presenting a reliable political vision. For much of the past decade, the dominant framework for understanding China-US relations has been the Thucydides Trap. Since Graham Allison popularised the term, the relationship has been cast as an...
A temporary but fragile ceasefire is in place after US President Donald Trump pulled back from the brink of a wider Iran war. For Beijing, as it prepares for Trump’s high-stakes visit planned for next month, the key question is what the Iran crisis reveals about Trump’s governing style, and whether it has left him emboldened or simply more unpredictable and volatile. The episode is the latest example of what Chinese observers call Trump’s “split” style: abrupt swings between conciliatory talk of...