By purging record numbers of officials and gutting the military, Xi Jinping has traded institutional competence for personal loyalty, leaving China fragile ahead of the 21st Party Congress.
By Tom Beckwith ·
By using the fifth plenum to make anti-corruption a permanent instrument of rule, Xi Jinping trades professional competence for obedience as domestic spending remains sluggish.
By Tom Beckwith ·
The New Yalu River Bridge is not a monument to friendship. It is a three-kilometer, four-lane piece of logistics designed to keep a regime breathing. When Kim Jong Un crossed that span into Dandong on October 24, 2026, he was not seeking a new era of peace. He was conducting a textbook exercise in patron-diversification.
By Tom Beckwith ·
President Trump's openness to a trilateral summit in Shenzhen, paired with sanctions waivers for Russia, prioritizes personal rapport over strategic stability and abandons Ukraine.
By Tom Beckwith ·
Vladimir Putin proposed a trilateral summit to end the Ukraine war without Kyiv's input, a move Donald Trump is entertaining to lower fuel prices at Ukraine's expense.
By Tom Beckwith ·
Prime Minister Modi and President Xi vowed to balance trade in Delhi, but India's $112bn deficit and component reliance reveal a deepening economic surrender.
By Tom Beckwith ·
By ruling out joint ventures with China, President Trump prioritizes technological containment over safety, a move that risks uncoordinated global systems as domestic security concerns grow.
By Tom Beckwith ·
Washington and Beijing agreed to lower tariffs on non-sensitive goods, dodging structural reform and proving that managed trade has learned nothing from the past.
By Tom Beckwith ·
President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to tariff cuts in Washington, but temporary institutional machinery cannot prevent future trade war escalation.
By Tom Beckwith ·
President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to rebrand AI and cut tariffs, but the cosmetic shift in language fails to address the underlying strategic competition.
By Tom Beckwith ·
Bill Gates warns that an AI kill switch is inadequate, demanding mandatory federal monitoring while Donald Trump and the White House dismiss preventative safeguards.
By Nikhil Raghavan ·
China sent Ping Ping and Fu Shuang to Zoo Atlanta after a Washington summit, a move that uses biological theater to hide deeper structural frictions between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.
By Tom Beckwith ·
By criticizing US actions in Cuba and Iran after a White House visit, China reveals that diplomatic theater cannot mask a systemic rivalry driven by material interests.
By Tom Beckwith ·
Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for China's leader in Washington, trading real security concessions for pageantry and leaving critical trade disputes unresolved.
By Tom Beckwith ·
Washington and Beijing cut tariffs on non-sensitive goods and open an incident channel, but five years out, trade coercion and technological decoupling will outlive the truce.
By Tom Beckwith ·
President Donald Trump wants to rename artificial intelligence to signal dominance, but a lexical shift cannot replace the actual engineering capacity needed to lead China.
By Nikhil Raghavan ·