China and America are barely speaking, though crises loom

During Donald Trump’s four years in the White House, tempests buffeted relations between America and China. There was a trade war, backed by presidential tweets “hereby” ordering American businesses to leave China. There was also mutual finger-pointing over the origins of covid-19, including conspiracy theories, promoted by Chinese diplomats, that the virus began in an American military laboratory. In 2020 Mr Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, urged his country to see clearly its differences with the “bankrupt, totalitarian” ideology of the Communist Party, and to empower the Chinese people to “induce China to change”. That speech is not forgotten in Beijing, where party leaders heard a call for their overthrow.