President Trump’s tariffs weren’t enough to hold back the global export flood by China, which pushed past last year’s record in just 11 months.

China has spent years building a sophisticated A2/AD network covering its First Island Chain. America has likewise spent years planning to defeat it.

In October, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in South Korea. According to Trump, the meeting with Xi—his first since returning to office in January—was a “great success,

U.S. strategic competition in 2026. China’s growth model and industrial policy is rooted in dominating the commanding heights of the economy, now defined by Beijing as science, technology, and advanced manufacturing.

China’s renminbi is lagging the currencies of key trading partners, making Chinese goods and services cheap and helping to drive exports.

Broadly speaking, international research collaborations continue to rise globally, and Adams says that’s a good thing: the highest-impact research, at least in terms of citations, tends to flow from multilateral research partnerships. The United States and China remain dominant forces, but the balance of power is shifting.

Tremendous opportunities are here for Western companies” looking into service areas, says prominent business scholar John Quelch

China has omitted the phrase “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” from a defense white paper for the first time in 19 years, signaling a possible shift in its position as it competes with the United States,