It is not ideology that Beijing should count on, then, but incompetence. With TPP and the Paris Agreement, the Trump White House has been driven by rank opportunism – not in pursuit of a coherent set of policy goals, but rather to claim alpha status by the simplest means available.

The following are remarks by C.H. Tung, Chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, at the High-Level Dialogue on US-China Economic Relations in New York on June 14, 2017. The dialogue was co-hosted by the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and the Asia Society Policy Institute.

As cooperation advances and with a shared position on climate change, China-EU relations are likely to maintain a momentum of steady growth, and cooperation will become increasingly important in this world of increased uncertainties about the US.

While the BRI will provide China with geopolitical gains as well as costs, it is unlikely to be as much of a game changer in grand strategy. A more difficult question is whether the US can live up to its part.

Whereas nationalism in China was fused with “bottom-up” revolutions and thus had an inherent obligation to change existing conditions, nationalism in Japan, aligned with “top-down” restorations and later imperialism, was more a direct force of anti-revolutionary oppression with the obligation to preserve the status quo. Given that Japan’s nationalism is divorced from popular spontaneity and mass support, fears about “resurging Japanese nationalism”, albeit understandable, are probably misplaced.

U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow are helping to create a more assertive Russia determined to countervail American power, even as a special counsel investigates alleged collusion between President Donald Trump’s election campaign and Moscow, have compelled Russia to pivot to China.

Tightening its belt, the US recalibrates its outreach to the rest of the world, from defense to diplomacy to peacekeeping.

In the foreseeable future, the Trump administration will be constrained by the special counsel’s Russia investigation. How will it impact the White House’s relations with China?

When policymakers decide to deal with China, they should remember that Mao’s experience cast a long shadow over China’s history. His admiration for America in his youth as well as his later hopes for U.S.-China rapprochement was later negated by his perception of humiliation, invasion, and partitioning by foreign powers, resulting in his deep distrust of America. Whether anyone accepts it or not, this historical context rooted in the French Château will be the frame of reference, however subtle, for China when dealing with the West.

The first meeting of the biannual bilateral consultation mechanism to manage the South China Sea disputes, which is hoped to have a positive cascading effect on the early conclusion for a regional Code of Conduct on the disputed sea. Hints of possible cooperation in non-traditional security can be gleaned from President Duterte’s interest to welcome Chinese presence in the Sulu Sea to help address maritime piracy and armed sea robbery.