{"id":428717,"date":"2026-01-25T09:20:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T09:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/428717\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T09:20:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T09:20:21","slug":"trumps-wrecking-ball-pushes-us-allies-closer-to-china-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/428717\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s wrecking ball pushes US allies closer to China | China"},"content":{"rendered":"

If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland\u2019s good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland\u2019s leader, Miche\u00e1l Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping<\/a>, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us but there you are,\u201d Martin told<\/a> reporters in Beijing.<\/p>\n

China is on a charm offensive with western leaders, a path cleared by Donald Trump\u2019s increasingly erratic and destabilising power grabs on the global stage. Although Europe breathed a sigh of relief this week when Trump withdrew the threat<\/a> of using military force in Greenland and said he would not impose tariffs on opponents of his plans in the Arctic, the US no longer seems like a reliable partner.<\/p>\n

An editorial in the Chinese newspaper the Global Times<\/a> made Beijing\u2019s pitch clear: headlined \u201cEurope should seriously consider building a China-EU community with a shared future\u201d, the state media article said the world risked \u201creturning to the law of the jungle\u201d and that China and the EU should cooperate in building \u201ca shared future for mankind\u201d.<\/p>\n

No country can afford to cut ties or truly antagonise the world\u2019s biggest economy. But in the search for stability, US allies are turning to the country that many in Washington see as an existential threat: China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith US policy again looking unpredictable \u2013 underscored by tensions and tariff threats over Greenland \u2013 European leaders are making sure to keep channels with Beijing open,\u201d says Eva Seiwert, a senior analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. \u201cThe risk is that this approach sustains or even deepens existing dependencies on China at a moment when Europe\u2019s stated goal is de-risking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Carney, elected as Canada\u2019s prime minister on promises to stand up to bullying from the US, set the tone for western countries\u2019 recalibration with China when he travelled to Beijing<\/a> last week. \u201cCanada is forging a new strategic partnership with China,\u201d Carney said. The global order, he said, was at a point of \u201crupture \u2026 not a transition\u201d.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Mark Carney visits Ritan Park, Beijing, during his visit to China this month. Photograph: Carlos Osorio\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Officially, China views this rebalancing with caution. Another article<\/a> published in state media this week explicitly hit back at the idea that China welcomed the current chaos.<\/p>\n

Song Bo, a fellow at Tsinghua University\u2019s Center for International Security and Strategy, says Chinese policymakers are unwilling to publicly admit that the global order has fundamentally changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have always believed that we are the greatest beneficiary of the international order established after the cold war,\u201d Song says, referencing China\u2019s rapid economic growth that came with the globalisation of the 1990s and 2000s. \u201cIt is difficult for us to accept that the current order is undergoing a major transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another perspective on the matter comes from Ryan Haas, a senior fellow at Brookings. In a post on X, he wrote: \u201cIn viewing Trump\u2019s efforts to gain control of Greenland, Beijing appears to be following Napoleon\u2019s maxim: \u2018Never interrupt your adversary when he\u2019s making a mistake.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Because although China pledges allegiance to the international rules-based order, Xi has long talked of the world undergoing \u201cgreat changes unseen in a century\u201d, echoing Carney\u2019s sentiment of global \u201crupture\u201d. Seiwert says: \u201cBeijing could use Carney\u2019s language rhetorically to suggest a shared diagnosis of US-centric instability, even if there is no convergence on values, interests or outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carney\u2019s pitch for China comes in part from his hostile relationship with Trump. In Trump\u2019s rambling address to Davos, he lambasted Carney<\/a> for failing to be \u201cgrateful\u201d to the US. \u201cCanada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark,\u201d Trump raged.<\/p>\n

\"WhatWhat Donald Trump’s Davos speech tells us about his Greenland bid \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Rather than kowtow to the southern neighbour, Carney is trying to lessen his country\u2019s dependence on the US. In Beijing, he agreed to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1%, diverting from an alignment with Washington that had left one of China\u2019s key exports in effect blocked from the North American market.<\/p>\n

Chinese EVs are now on course to make up about one-fifth of Canada\u2019s EV sales, if not more. The deal is a major political win for China, even if it represents only a small share of China\u2019s EV exports. Concerns about economic dependence on China and even Chinese interference in Canadian elections appear to have dropped down the agenda.<\/p>\n

Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, arrives in China next week with a slightly different set of circumstances. He has a warmer relationship with Trump, although his rhetoric hardened<\/a> in recent days with spats over Greenland and the Chagos Islands<\/a>. And he is under pressure at home to show he is tough on China when it comes to security and human rights, two issues that inflamed the issue of the controversial Chinese mega embassy application in London, which the government approved this week<\/a> in the face of intense opposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarmer may not have proved himself an effective prime minister or knowledgable about China, but he is not stupid,\u201d says Steve Tsang, the director of the Soas China Institute. \u201cHe will want to improve relations with China to improve the UK\u2019s economy and trade, but he is not going to see China as a more reliable partner to the UK than the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, like Carney, Starmer will be hoping to ink deals and drum up much-needed investment in the UK economy. He will be accompanied by representatives from blue-chip British companies and is expected to revive<\/a> a UK-China CEO council, despite growing concerns about the national security risks of Chinese investments.<\/p>\n

The pivot to Beijing is far from straightforward. Song notes that the leadership of the European Commission remains hostile to China, something that Chinese officials and business leaders find hard to square with the supposedly warmer ties between China and individual European countries.<\/p>\n

According to Song, the bloc\u2019s overall frostiness and the war in Ukraine are the biggest barriers to deepening ties. \u201cWithout resolving these two issues, Sino-European relations will not see any significant improvement,\u201d Song says.<\/p>\n

Ukraine may be particularly high on the agenda for Petteri Orpo, Finland\u2019s prime minister, who lands in Beijing on Sunday. \u201cChina\u2019s support for Russia has definitely strained relations with the Nordic states and Finland is no exception,\u201d says Patrik Andersson, an analyst at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. But Andersson notes that Finland\u2019s China relations have typically been more stable than those of Sweden and Norway, and this visit is likely to bolster those ties.<\/p>\n

In the months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, European countries wrestled with the fact that many were dependent on Russia for key commodities such as fossil fuels. There were calls to avoid falling into a similar situation with China, the world\u2019s most important supplier of clean energy technology. Even back in 2020, the chair of the UK\u2019s joint intelligence committee, Simon Gass, said<\/a>: \u201cChina represents a risk on a pretty wide scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such concerns may be fading into the rearview mirror as middle powers seek to cling on to a world of multilateralism in the face of a wrecking ball swung by the country that was once its greatest defender. China insists Trump\u2019s behaviour is nothing to celebrate. But the outcome may nevertheless strengthen Beijing\u2019s position on the world stage.<\/p>\n

Additional research by Lillian Yang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-428717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}