China Sees Trump Era as 'New Warring States'
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- Chinese strategists have framed Trump's 2016 election and 2024 return as part of a deeper American current of isolationism, viewing the US as actively undermining institutions like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization that it itself created.
- Beijing draws on the 2004 book "The New Warring States Period" by Wang Jian, Wang Xiangsui, Qiao Liang, and Li Xiaoning, which forecast decades of state-to-state friction from US order collapse, as a medium-term aim to survive the destruction of the American-made world and emerge stronger.
- Iran is characterized as a "failing state" of nearly 100 million people where the Revolutionary Guards hold final say but have not rebuilt political unity; the old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is gone, and the extent of his son Mojtaba's role is unclear.
- The analysis argues that despite MAGA's isolationist rhetoric, US influence has actually grown in Venezuela and Syria, raising the risk that Beijing's caution inadvertently helps expand America's disruptive role and "shoots itself in the foot" if US power is reorganizing rather than disintegrating.
- A new defense pact among Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan is described as evidence that regional players doubt US management of Iran and are building alliances that could be deployed against Beijing, while Israel now tries to draw India — historically close to Iran — into its orbit.
- North Korea has become a source of Chinese worry: scholar Zheng Jiyong notes Beijing is "increasingly worried about North Korea's role" in creating regional risks, while Russia's new ties with Pyongyang have forced China onto a tight leash it cannot realistically maintain amid accelerating nuclear rearmament in South Korea and Japan.
Why it matters: The crux is that China's strategic bet — that American power is in structural retreat and Beijing can simply wait it out — may misread the signs if US influence is reorganizing rather than declining. If Russia and Iran, two pillars of Chinese foreign policy, falter simultaneously, Beijing faces more geopolitical trouble than its current passivity anticipates, especially with the Turkey-Saudi-Pakistan pact and North Korea's nuclear drift reshaping China's neighborhood against its interests.
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