President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, shake hands after their U.S.-China summit talk at Gimhae International Airport Jinping in Busan, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP/PTI)

Originally Published as ‘Two superpowers’, The Indian Express, 31 October 2025. p.10. Published online as ‘Trump-Xi meeting: Washington-Beijing rivalry is more than a tale of rise and decline — it’s a mirror of two nations wrestling to determine the next global order’, 31 October 2025.

Altogether too much discussion on the US-China relationship today focuses on a contrast between the two countries. On the one hand, there is hand-wringing and head-slapping about America’s increasing global weaknesses and unpopularity, its seemingly inevitable decline engendered by the zero-sum worldview and the chaotic policymaking of its 47th president, Donald Trump. On the other hand, meanwhile, there is grudging – sometimes open – admiration for the Chinese party-state’s determined, methodical march under Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping that has seen the PLA Navy overtaking the US Navy in size, ensured leadership in several critical technologies, and a growing perception that China’s takeover of Taiwan is an inevitability.

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