As China flexes muscles, Trump miscalculates nation’s strength

The lavish national day parade last week in Beijing marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was something Donald Trump surely would have loved to call his own.

In front of thousands of carefully selected citizens, applauding enthusiastically on cue, it featured a pageant of more than 100,000 performers and an astonishing display of new weapons systems, many of them nuclear, with President Xi Jinping lauded as his country’s hero and promising that “no force can shake the status of this great nation.”

As well as being a throwback to the old Cold War days of endless Soviet parades, its tone was quintessential Trump.

It was also silent, of course, about the protests against Chinese rule happening at the same time in Hong Kong on what the city’s police chief described as “one of its most violent and chaotic days.”

Instead, the tightly choreographed event seemed intended by authorities to inspire and above all, to intimidate.

It was a warning to the country’s restive masses and to its global rivals that they see the 21st century as China’s century, so take notice and step aside.

That was undoubtedly the intended message of the unprecedented display of nuclear weaponry in the parade, including the new DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile — China’s longestrange weapon — that is believed to be able to breach existing U.S. anti-missile shields and reach the American mainland within 30 minutes.

This display of raw nuclear power in Beijing last week was a sobering reminder that the future of the world in this century will largely depend on the state of the relationship between its two most important nations — China and the United States.

That is the context in which American and Chinese trade negotiators find themselves as they prepare for a crucial meeting this week in Washington. It will be the 13th round of talks to try to end a growing trade war that has seriously damaged both countries, rattled financial markets and threatened the global economic outlook.

At one point, both sides were very close to an agreement, but since then, most analysts believe that both countries have mishandled the dispute.

There is considerable hope that this week’s round of negotiations will produce a breakthrough. For its part, China is clearly suffering under the barrage of American tariffs and with the U.S. side, a new consideration — called “impeachment” — has become part of the equation.

Constantly, Trump and his trade negotiators have exaggerated the economic damage this trade war is causing China, and it is widely known that the American side has been astonished that China has not given in yet.

In a similar way, the U.S. is miscalculating the potential military threat of China in the years ahead.

A new report from the respected U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney has concluded that the U.S. military is no longer the primary force in Asia. It says that America’s defence strategy in the region “is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis” and that China’s expanding military could overwhelm U.S. bases in Asia “in the opening hours of a conflict.”

It may be premature to declare that China will rule this 21st century. But it is also wishful thinking on the part of Trump’s crowd that China is on the brink of collapse.