Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: The U.S. military prioritizes deterring a conflict over Taiwan, the Kremlin confirms Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia, and Beijing weighs fentanyl talks with Washington as a tariff off-ramp.
The Pentagon Focuses on Hypothetical Taiwan Conflict
The U.S. Defense Department is becoming more focused on a hypothetical conflict with China—at the same time as U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies are undercutting alliances in the Asia-Pacific.
The Pentagon has outlined plans to reconfigure the U.S. military for great-power struggles instead of sporadic counterinsurgencies. An internal guidance memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which appears to be based on the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, identifies China as the United States’ “sole pacing threat.” Deterring a Chinese seizure of Taiwan is a top priority, and the United States is expected to “assume risk in other theaters” accordingly.
The reconfiguration draws inspiration from the controversial overhaul of the U.S. Marine Corps in 2020, which reoriented the branch from its focus on tactical flexibility toward becoming an island-hopping force in a Pacific conflict. But this strategy only makes sense if one believes that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is inevitable in the next few years and that a wider war with the United States would follow.
This idea has been a fixation in Washington for years. Just last week, U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Adm. Samuel Paparo brought up the possibility of China invading Taiwan in 2027, the date of the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Paparo’s subordinate, Gen. Ronald Clark, echoed similar concerns in a recent interview. To his credit, Paparo correctly stated that Chinese President Xi Jinping has not actually called for the PLA to invade Taiwan in 2027 but instead demanded that it be ready to do so by that date.
Xi’s ask to the PLA might seem threatening, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate immediate danger. Countries can bloviate about seizing territory for decades and then suddenly act on it, whether it’s Russia in Ukraine or Argentina in the Falklands. But Chinese leaders often invoke Taiwan as a metonym for PLA readiness, and threatening Taiwan is something of a political necessity for every Chinese leader.
Additionally, U.S. leaders don’t seem to have considered how recent events—especially the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s ongoing purge of the military over widespread corruption—might have affected the PLA’s readiness, reform plans, and budgets, all of which could push back a 2027 timeline.
Trump’s own agenda, however, seems to differ from that of China hawks in his administration. Trump is “confident” that Xi will not invade Taiwan during his second term, according to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Despite the shift in Pentagon strategy, Trump himself has given little attention to the Asia-Pacific, repeatedly dismissing Taiwan’s importance and attempting to extort money from U.S. allies for defense contributions.
U.S. allies in the region are walking a fine line between paying off Trump—both directly and with possible trade concessions—and dealing with domestic constituencies that are angry with Washington’s antics. Australia’s election on May 3 saw a firm rejection of Trumpism, which is worrying given the country’s key logistical role in any conflict with China and for the prospects of the submarine deal between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
That said, Beijing’s saber-rattling could drive countries back into Washington’s arms. China has somewhat curbed its nationalistic tone lately, but it is still engaging in flag-waving contests with the Philippines and Vietnam at sea and threats against countries that side with the United States in the trade war.
Ultimately, a more divided Asia-Pacific may not work to Trump’s advantage. The United States needs allies in Asia more than China does, and come 2027 countries may abstain from taking sides between two equally unreliable and belligerent superpowers.
What We’re Following
Xi’s Russia travels. The Kremlin confirmed on Sunday that Xi will visit Russia starting on Wednesday, timed to coincide with Russia’s celebration of the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, known as Victory Day. It will be Xi’s 11th visit to Russia as Chinese president—more than twice the number of times he has visited any other country.
Victory Day is significant because both Russia and China frame their territorial claims and place in the global order as endorsed by their World War II triumphs. In China’s case, this is somewhat ironic, since it was the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic of China, that was part of the Allied powers and that held the U.N. Security Council seat until 1971.
Xi’s trip is thus a symbolic gesture of support for Russia in its war on Ukraine—all the more so given Kyiv’s renewed accusations of Beijing directly aiding Moscow.
Possible fentanyl talks. China is weighing an offer to start talks with the United States on fentanyl as a potential off-ramp from Trump’s tariffs, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though it’s still early, Chinese Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong has supposedly attempted to reach out to Trump officials for talks.
Both Mexico and Canada were able to forestall a full-blown trade war with the United States in February by offering Trump token concessions on the fentanyl issue.
But China is sensitive about accusations of drug trafficking, since a key part of its national mythology is the role of foreign traffickers during the Opium Wars and the Chinese Communist Party’s harsh anti-drug stance. (The party grew and sold opium for financial support in the 1930s and 1940s, but this is a taboo topic.)
Indeed, trying to find a line that is acceptable to both Trump and Xi will be difficult.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Trump’s First 100 Days Reveal a ‘Strongman’s’ Unprecedented Weakness by Michael Hirsh
- Rubio’s Reorganization Plan Is a Wrecking Ball by Jessica Stern
- Trump’s First 100 Days on the Global Stage by FP Contributors
Tech and Business
Tariff impacts loom. The slow-moving collapse of trade with China will start affecting everyday life in the United States this month, particularly as the massive drop in shipping volumes is reflected on supermarket shelves. E-commerce giants Temu and Shein are in dire straits in the United States—formerly their largest market—and are now reorienting toward Europe.
The price impact for U.S. consumers may be substantial—and notably has not sparked the reshoring by global firms that Trump promised but instead thrown domestic manufacturing into chaos. It’s possible that Trump might blink as inflation bites, but the delayed effect of global shipping would leave a substantial gap even if sailing resumed tomorrow.
China, meanwhile, faces a deflationary spiral as goods flood an unprepared domestic market where the public is still nervous about spending. Chinese factories have seen few outright closures or layoffs—in part because Chinese labor law makes layoffs difficult without approval from local officials—and instead are reducing hours and cutting shifts.
An unexpected typewriter. Last Friday, Stanford University announced that it had acquired a prototype MingKwai typewriter, the first Chinese implementation of a keyboard model, which was long thought lost but was discovered in a New York basement this year.
Chinese typewriters played a key role in adapting character-based languages to the modern era, laying the groundwork for the boom in Chinese computing in the 1980s that produced China’s vast digital infrastructure today.
As Chinese physicist Yangyang Cheng wrote on Friday, the MingKwai was invented in 1947 by Lin Yutang, a once famous Chinese writer who spent much of his life in the United States and tried to position himself as a bridge between cultures.
Lin’s contemporary Qian Zhongshu, however, painted a less flattering picture. In his novel Cat, Qian describes a character who is a thinly veiled portrait of Lin as publishing “a number of essays on the Chinese national character in which he enumerated the common human instincts and identified them all as ineffably Chinese.”
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