There is a 'temporal inequality' in China—a sense that there were specific windows when entering the property market or job market at the right time created opportunities for upward mobility, but those ladders are disappearing, and this absence of social mobility ('fewer trains to catch') is a major source of male discontent in the population.

Both China and the United States could dominate key technologies of the future AND have a stagnant, less happy society simultaneously; these outcomes are not mutually exclusive, and it is possible that China will achieve technological dominance while experiencing internal social stagnation and unhappiness.

China viewed WTO accession as a mechanism to force difficult economic reform domestically, deliberately exposing Chinese companies to foreign competition to make them stronger, sending students to American universities even knowing some would stay in the US, and leveraging the certainty that WTO membership gave foreign investors so they could invest with predictability, rather than primarily seeking market access and tariff reduction.

Interdependency is generally beneficial until it becomes perceived as frightening and a vulnerability; the same economic ties that were celebrated as stabilizing and mutually beneficial suddenly appear as threatening strategic vulnerabilities when geopolitical tension rises.

Trump's recent statement about foreign policy focusing on trade and economic prosperity rather than democracy promotion is the same as Xi's position; therefore, Trump has effectively adopted Xi's foreign policy view, and the challenge is how that convergence will play out given that both leaders are now operating from the same playbook.

When the day after the Bucha massacre (a suburb of Kyiv in Ukraine where Russian soldiers killed civilians), the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to calls for China to condemn it by asking whether the US would lift semiconductor export controls on China if China condemned the massacre, demonstrating China's cold, transactional, chess-playing approach to international morality.

Some Chinese scholars and officials believe that Trump's desire to reengage with Vladimir Putin and bring Russia in from geopolitical isolation is advantageous for China because it will remove European nagging about China's relationship with Russia, and China could position itself as a beneficiary of Ukraine's reconstruction.

Chinese ambassador behavior demonstrates China's narrow self-interest orientation: when the US withdrew PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) funding for HIV antiretrovirals in South African townships, China refused to step in despite low cost (~$8 billion annually), citing its tradition of not providing direct grants, thereby missing an opportunity to displace US goodwill in Africa.

Generational turnover in Chinese politics is critically important because Xi Jinping's generation (sent to countryside during Cultural Revolution, witnessing brutal acts, massacres, and purges) is 'damaged' and 'brutalized' by that experience; a Chinese academic of Xi's generation described his cohort as 'the worst people' and said China has 'no hope' until that generation leaves power.

We should acknowledge our 'better self' rather than aiming for our 'best self'—a more modest but achievable standard for US foreign policy; even with current dysfunction, the US simply needs to perform at a higher level than China is performing, not achieve perfect adherence to values.

36% of Chinese undergraduates study engineering compared to 5% in the United States, representing a significant difference in human capital investment in technical fields that could affect future dominance in certain sectors.

PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) was an incredibly successful program started by George W. Bush that created fantastic goodwill for the United States across Africa at modest cost; China could pick up the program for approximately $8 billion per year and completely displace US goodwill in that continent.

Trump's talk of potentially invading Greenland for access to critical minerals and rare earth elements contributes to enabling Xi Jinping's vision by diminishing the United States' moral standing and credibility on the global stage while justifying China's own territorial expansion by analogy.

Both Trump and Biden administrations view China's WTO entry in 2001 as having been a mistake, reflecting convergence across administrations that this was a costly error regardless of political party.

China's initial response to the Bucha massacre in Ukraine was cold and transactional—offering to condemn the massacre only in exchange for lifting US semiconductor export controls—demonstrating China's pragmatic, self-interested approach to major geopolitical events.

There exists a 'temporal inequality' in China where younger people perceive that opportunities to change one's life (via property ownership, job market entry at favorable times) have disappeared, creating widespread malaise in the population summarized by the Chinese phrase 'shang' (catch the train) with fewer trains to catch.

It is entirely possible and not mutually exclusive that China could both dominate key technologies of the future AND have a stagnant and less happy society simultaneously.

When the US cancelled PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) funding in Africa, China expressed unwillingness to replace it through direct grants, citing the Chinese tradition of not providing direct aid, which suggests China is unprepared or unwilling to substitute for withdrawing US global public goods provision.

Trump's recent statements in Saudi Arabia about the foolishness of US democracy promotion and regime change, arguing instead that economic prosperity solves all problems, align closely with Xi Jinping's stated foreign policy views, suggesting Trump has inadvertently adopted China's preferred foreign policy approach.

The US commitment to free trade is also questionable: the country can no longer be called 'the biggest advocate for free trade out there,' contradicting Jim Baker's argument that free trade is a distinctive US value and export.