The Economist reports: "The National Security Strategy released by President Donald Trump's administration last year augured a major change in China-US relations. Where its predecessors lauded the merits of co-operation with the emerging superpower, Mr Trump's document promised competition and resistance to Chinese trade and other abuses. The tirade Mike Pence launched against China last week doubled down on that commitment. In a speech delivered at the Hudson Institute, a short walk from Congress and the ongoing Kavanaugh brouhaha, the vice-president castigated the Chinese for bullying investors, buying allies with cheap loans, 'tearing down crosses' and much else. This may turn out to be Mr Trump's most significant mark on the world. America's new adversarial posture towards China is overdue, popular and probably irreversible. That is notwithstanding the fact that the vice-president's speech was in some ways cynical and reckless. Much of it seemed to have more of an eye on the mid-terms than the world. 'To put it bluntly, President Trump's leadership is working,' he purred."

The Washington Post reports: "The heads of the World Bank and IMF appealed Thursday to the U.S. and China to cool their dispute over technology policy and play by world trade rules, as tumbling share prices drove home potential perils from a clash between the world's two biggest economies. Global economic growth is slowing but remains strong, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said on the sidelines of the IMF-World Bank annual meeting, being held this week on the Indonesian island of Bali. Countries are mostly in a 'strong position,' she said, 'which is why we believe we are not seeing what is referred to as 'contagion.'' But the gyrations that rocked Wall Street the day before and Asia and Europe on Thursday, taking the Shanghai Composite index down 5.2 percent and Japan's Nikkei 225 nearly 4 percent, do partly reflect rising interest rates in the U.S. and some other countries and growing uncertainty over trade, she said."

The Atlantic reports: "China has spent years trying to gain an equal footing in international institutions originally set up by the West. Those efforts have seen gradual success, as Chinese nationals have come to occupy leading positions on United Nations committees, multilateral development banks, international courts, and many other organizations. So when Meng Hongwei, a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party member who was chosen to serve as the president of Interpol in 2016, disappeared last month while visiting China, and was revealed two weeks later to have been detained by Chinese authorities, it seemed like an unforced error. Interpol is an important international organization tasked with facilitating cooperation between police forces in countries around the world. But even so, party disciplinary authorities were treating Meng first and foremost as a party member who had strayed from the straight and narrow, rather than as the internationally recognized top official of a major multilateral organization who deserves due process."