How China Is Playing the Long Game With Trump

Traditional American allies have come to see the US as an unreliable partner under President Donald Trump. Now they’re looking to hedge their bets by way of China, and just as President Xi Jinping positions his nation as the “adult in the room.” Most recently, the US-Israel war with Iran has upended relationships between Washington and Europe while being the latest complicating factor in any attempt to stabilize relations between the world’s two biggest economies.

China has called on all parties to cease military operations in the war—it has a vested interest in seeing the conflict end, given how much it relies on fossil fuels coming out of the Strait of Hormuz. But at the same time, widening chaos tied to Trump’s trade and foreign policies—and especially his military threats and attacks on other nations—may be playing into the hands of Chinese President Xi Jinping. In this Bloomberg Originals weekly documentary, we look at how the US under Trump may be speeding China’s geopolitical rise.