The agreement marks the emergence of constructive rules for the entire East Asia region. The parties no longer look to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with its burdensome provisions, as a model template.

It’s true that the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy has brought certain pressures and challenges to China, but these are manageable, given the thinning resources of the United States and the ability of Chinese diplomacy to adapt.

Emerging technologies are bringing advanced capabilities to more countries and adding new ambiguities, which only increase risk. Failing to strengthen controls now will lead to a new arms race.

Since the 1970s, the US has tread a fine line of pursuing neutrality on claims to the South China Sea. The Trump administration, however, looks set to upend that policy.

The role of small countries, whether in terms of moral influence, upholding free and open trade or promoting regional peace and stability, should not be underestimated.

As the WTO-led multilateral trading system has weakened, free trade areas are driving the process of laying down international rules.

Increasing cooperation between the Philippines and Russia suggests that there is a burgeoning relationship in the East that may lessen the Philippines’ dependency on the United States. Such a relationship also has implications for China’s involvement in the disputed South China Sea.

The United States-China trade war will make us all poorer and exacerbate the risks of war.

In the nineteenth century, the world was Europeanized. In the twentieth century, it was Americanized. Now, it is being Asianized – and much faster than you may think.

China and the United States find themselves in a situation that is gradually souring, but the current US strategy towards China is not exclusively a Trumpian one.