In a telltale sign of improving bilateral relations, the Philippines and China have announced a preliminary agreement to pursue a joint development agreement in the South China Sea.

The Trump-Kim summit is a beginning, but there’s no telling how it’ll end.

Peace and development remain today’s prevailing theme.

Tillerson’s replacement by Pompeo will see a more hawkish State Department, especially on China.

With the selection of CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, China in particular is more likely to become a target of the Trump administration.

Cooper and Douglas presented four visions of U.S. strategy towards China: primacy, balance, concert and integration. President Trump’s persona, rhetoric and actions suggest that he will lean more towards primacy with an element of balance in dealing with China. Primacy and balance constitute viable strategies in dealing with an emerging rival, but over reliance on these two unnecessarily limits U.S. foreign policy maneuverability and poses serious danger.

The summit will accomplish almost nothing if no conditions are set, and the summit will not materialize at all if too many conditions are put on the table.

Jared McKinney uses three historical analogies to illustrate his point that it is a reductionist proposition that the U.S., as the ‘champion’ of democracy, and China, as a rising ‘revisionist’ state, are locked into an existential struggle in which one will lose and one win.

Optimism about this turn of events must be tempered with cautious realism. North Korea is the nuclear problem from hell. Neither South Korea nor the United States can control the narrative; definitions of success or failure are highly relative; and Trump must enter the talks with no exit strategy.

Fears of serious conflict between China and the U.S. are the result of hasty conclusions, superficiality, one-sidedness, and claptrap.