The basic theme of this series has been the degree to which the challenge posed by rising, assertive China has both intensified and changed in recent years, as Beijing’s global ambitions and initiatives have reached a new level. While most Westerners are familiar with Beijing’s efforts to do so through its economic power and growing military might, another facet of that campaign has received less attention: China’s intensifying efforts to remake the international institutional order.　For decades

The success of North America’s bid to host the 2026 World Cup is one hopeful sign that the US and its neighbors could be ending the era characterized by dysfunctional governance, infrastructure neglect and a withdrawal from the world stage. For the first time in ages, America has something to look forward to.　Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the world has seemed zero sum, divided into winners and losers: the political extremes of left and right, terrorism versus nations, the wealth of the ho

Theoretically, the Trump administration’s immigration policy is based on two core principles: upholding the rule of law and promoting a “merit-based” system that’s good for the economy.　So why has the Department of Homeland Security just proposed to scrap the International Entrepreneur Rule, a late-Obama program intended to lure the world’s most promising entrepreneurs to create companies and jobs in America rather than elsewhere?The department doesn’t dispute the lawfulness of the program, whos

Who invented modern steel? It’s a 160-year-old controversy that’s still going strong -- and the answer, in a way, lies at the heart of the current US-Chinese trade tensions.　Many Americans are taught that the originator was William Kelly, whose ironworks in Eddyville, Kentucky was among the first to produce the metal. In the UK and elsewhere, credit generally goes to Henry Bessemer, who obtained the first patents for a mass production process that’s used in modified form to this day.　As with the

The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017 is sure to loom large in future accounts of China’s relations with the world. It was then that the party cleared the way for Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely, and when Xi himself advertised China’s global ambitions by declaring that Beijing would now “take center stage” in world affairs. It was also when Xi threw down the gauntlet in an equally consequential way. 　In his three-hour speech to the assembled delegates, Xi extolled the

If US President Donald Trump wanted to discredit the West, he could hardly be doing a more thorough job of it. The hostility he directed at ostensible allies in the G-7 last weekend was bad enough, especially when contrasted with the obsequious praise he lavished on North Korea’s murderous Kim Jong-un in Singapore.　Worse perhaps was the visual contrast between the G-7 and a third, recently concluded summit -- a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Qingdao. There, Trump’s counterpa

I wrote a column recently about how a longstanding assumption of America’s China policy -- that economic integration between the two countries is an unalloyed good -- has now been overtaken by events. But this isn’t the only area in which China’s rise is forcing a re-evaluation of old beliefs.Now, I’ll delve into another issue with enormous implications for US-China relations and American interests: the rise of China as a more globally oriented military power.For years, most experts believed tha

If the record cost of the Sochi Winter Olympics of 2014 was the embodiment of Russian government wastefulness, the soccer World Cup, which starts on Thursday, appears far more restrained. Yet, despite its best efforts to bring expenses under control, President Vladimir Putin’s regime still hasn’t learned how to be parsimonious.　 The most-often quoted cost assessment for the Sochi Olympics is $51 billion, $11 billion more than the second most expensive Olympics, the 2008 Beijing summer games. The

President Donald Trump says many things that aren’t true, but following his historic meeting Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his repeated assertion during a press conference that “it does take a long time” to “pull off complete denuclearization” stacks up pretty well. It will probably take a decade at the very least.　 It’s not hard for a nation to dismantle or destroy its nuclear weapons, as well as the technological infrastructure used to create them. North Korea may have as many

There was a time, only half a year ago, when President Donald Trump seemed clear eyed about North Korea. He invited a survivor of one of its gulags who had walked thousands of miles to freedom to be an honored guest at this year’s State of the Union. Behind the petty insults he once hurled at Kim Jong-un, Trump also spoke eloquently about the Kim regime’s true, horrific nature.　Well, it turns out all of that talk of Koreans yearning for freedom was prattle. Trump is in deal-making mode. So he la

I should have been excited as I watched a historic event unfold in Singapore. The summit meeting of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un held out hope that the last ugly conflict of the Cold War could be brought to a close, alleviating the threat of nuclear war in Asia and possibly opening up the vicious North Korean dictatorship to the world.For me, the matter is more personal. I lived in South Korea for several years in the 1990s, and I’m forever connected to the peninsula by bonds of family and frien

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un didn’t agree on anything of global importance, and the grandiose photo opportunity that took place in Singapore probably benefited Kim more than it did Trump. But the beauty of the moment is that Trump doesn’t care about that sort of thing, and that could be good for world peace.Consistency isn’t generally one of Trump’s strengths. Even at his Singapore press conference on Tuesday, he first said North Koreans’ human rights had been di

President Donald Trump could never be accused of underestimating the impact of Chinese economic espionage and technology transfer on the United States. “We’re talking about big damages,” he said when discussing retaliation for intellectual property theft in a January interview. “We’re talking about numbers that you haven’t even thought about.”His tariffs and a recently floated proposal to restrict certain Chinese researchers in the US are calibrated to be equally tough. But will they work?To ans

UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson reportedly once said that he enjoyed trying to change the course of history, even if that meant “throwing rocks into glass houses and listening to the shattering of glass.” So it’s no wonder he thinks that US President Donald Trump would be a great Brexit leader.“Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Britain’s chief diplomat told a room of 20 Conservative Party guests at a private dinner Wednesday night, in an off-the-record talk leaked to Buzzfeed. “He’d go in bloody h

Almost any foreign official, businessman or journalist visiting Beijing has heard the mantra that China can’t be expected to open up its markets or meet more stringent international standards because it’s still a developing economy. Maybe that argument was valid 20 years ago. Now it’s increasingly tenuous. More importantly, it’s damaging to China and the world.Pleading poverty ignores the tremendous economic progress China has made in the last few decades. When China joined the World Trade Organ

The substance of the Singapore summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un is a complete mystery. Will they discuss little more than agreeing to more discussions? Will Kim make a dramatic concession on his nuclear arsenal? Will Trump respond with a drawdown of US troops on the peninsula? Will they finally end the Korean War?　To answer some of these questions, I talked to someone who has dealt with the North Koreans before: Victor Cha. Now a professor at Georgetown and chair of the Korea program

As we approach the Singapore Summit between Kim Jung-un and Donald Trump -- two volatile leaders drawn inexorably to the flame of international publicity without a clear idea of how the talks will come out -- there is a larger agenda at play that is far less visible to the public.　While North Korea and the US play a simple game of checkers, with characteristic stops and starts, the Chinese have an entirely different board game open in front of them -- the ancient game of Go.What is China up to?

Once upon a time, Congress had the lead role in trade policy. Think back to the “tariff of abominations” of the 19th century or Smoot-Hawley of the 20th in your high school history class. So how did the presidency come to take charge of trade to the extent that it’s news when a bipartisan group in the Senate and some House Republicans move to reclaim that power? And why is that objective probably unachievable?　Jennifer Delton, at Made by History, describes how trade-supporting liberals, beginnin

Many Republicans felt that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton made no attempt to be president of the whole nation -- and many Democrats believed the same about George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. They were wrong. Those partisans were projecting their own antipathy towards one or another president onto those presidents.　It’s true that all presidents do sometimes talk directly to only part of the nation, and when they do that they are most likely to speak to their supporters. It’s also true that all pres

Every year millions of Americans receive an asset that, based on past performance, promises to nearly double their lifetime incomes: a bachelor’s degree. Earning one is an achievement to be proud of. For the vast majority of young adults, however, this prize is increasingly out of reach. One answer is to make college more affordable -- by lowering tuition, increasing financial aid for poor students, and reducing the time needed to graduate. Such reforms deserve support. But a different answer is