World News by Wild Rose

For a decade, foreign policy circles have treated war between the United States and China as something close to destiny. The theory has a fancy, fashionable name borrowed from ancient Greece: the “Thucydides Trap” – the idea that a rising power and an established one are fated to collide, the way two articulated lorries merging into a single lane rarely ends well. The term is widely used in commentaries on US-China relations. Frictions get written off as “inevitable” regardless of what actually...

The two pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, arrived from southwestern China.

Southeast Asia is welcoming the thaw in US-China ties continuing after the Xi-Trump summit, with analysts saying the region could feel less pressure alongside fewer open frictions between the two over the South China Sea. Yet, caution persists as the summit left deeper disputes unresolved. “Stable great-power relations – competitive but with sturdy guardrails – will create more legroom for third countries to navigate an increasingly complex world,” according to Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a research...

First ladies Peng Liyuan and Melania Trump opened a new front in US-China exchanges this week, with their unusually frequent and spontaneous interactions putting a more personal face on ties during the presidential summit in Washington. The pair charted a parallel path of soft power diplomacy – sharing conversations, cultural outings and moments of apparent warmth during a visit otherwise shadowed by trade tensions, and artificial intelligence and other strategic issues. According to US-China...

Republican Senator from Montana Steve Daines said that he views the relationship between the US and China as 'too big to fail,' and says that he is appreciative of the President Trump's respectful approach to the relationship as conversations between the two leaders take place behind closed doors in Washington. Daines also discussed AI regulation and said he wants the US to have thoughtful, but fast paced AI governance. (Source: Bloomberg)

Erin Ogunkeye is pleased to welcome Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The US remains a powerful actor in its relationship with China. But power on paper is not the same thing as leverage at the negotiating table. Levin warns that President Trump’s highly personalized approach to Xi Jinping offers Beijing opportunities that China can easily exploit. Xi does not approach the relationship in the same way. Au contraire, he sees the United States as an adversary to be managed while China pursues its domestic priorities and strategic objectives in Asia, including on Taiwan. 

This live article is freely available to our registered users. Please log in or create an account. Unrivalled Xi-Trump summit analysis: get real-time updates and exclusive boots-on-the-ground reporting from our US and China bureaus. Subscribe now with great savings to stay ahead. President Xi Jinping is set to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington, in the first face-to-face meeting between the Chinese and American leaders since Trump visited Beijing in May. On this first day of Xi’s...

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held an unscheduled meeting with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Washington on Wednesday, hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping was due to arrive for a state visit. “We had some unfinished business from Sunday. We want strategic stability, but it has to be based on reciprocity and fairness,” Bessent told Fox News on his way to the meeting. The talks are under way at the World Bank headquarters in the US capital, following the two leaders’ engagement on...

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the White House is not just another ceremonial exchange. It is a test of whether the world’s two largest powers can build trust in an age where mistrust has become the default. Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the agenda. Both sides see danger but have yet to come up with meaningful regulatory cooperation. If this summit fails to deliver workable agreements, the tactical detente could collapse into a new cold war. If the leaders succeed in their personal...

On the eve of this week’s summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Americans feel better about China, according to a poll released on Monday. They see Beijing as less of a threat, are less supportive of Taiwan and are more likely to favour engagement over containment than last year or in 2024, when views hit an all-time low. As with almost everything in the US these days, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey revealed a partisan divide. And while the...

Former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell says talks between Washington and Beijing on security and AI will struggle to yield binding limits due to mutual distrust. He adds substantive progress may have to wait for a potential meeting between President Trump and President Xi at APEC or the G20. (Source: Bloomberg)

Hong Kong’s first post-colonial leader, Tung Chee-hwa, has been lauded as a pioneer of “one country, two systems”, a staunch patriot and a close friend of the Chinese Communist Party who also contributed to US-China relations, according to a eulogy delivered by a senior Beijing official. In his remarks at Tung’s state funeral on Sunday, seen by the South China Morning Post, Shi Taifeng – a Politburo member and first vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC),...

“Separatists” and the United States are putting Taiwan in greater danger, China’s state broadcaster CCTV warned on Friday after Washington’s de facto ambassador said the island could convince a potential adversary that landing forces would be very difficult. Raymond Greene, the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, said in a keynote address at the 2026 Taipei Security Dialogue on Wednesday that “Taiwan doesn’t need to demonstrate that it can win a war outright”. He added that Taiwan had...

Hong Kong’s first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, who died on Tuesday, has been lauded as “one of the greatest movers in China-US relations”, with a foundation established by a former American president’s family praising his “profound contributions” to deepening ties between the two nations. The US consulate and former city leader Donald Tsang Yam-kuen also praised Tung’s work in strengthening ties between the United States and Hong Kong, paving the way for deeper business links and high-level...

Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive who died on Tuesday at 89, kept a low profile in the final years of his life, making only a few public appearances but continuing to help bridge the China-US divide. Wearing a face mask and accompanied by his wife Betty Tung Chiu Hung-ping, Tung visited the South China Morning Post’s headquarters in Causeway Bay on December 1, 2020, to deliver a keynote speech at the China Conference organised by the company. Tung spoke in his capacity as a...