Not sure that's in the loop with key actors shaping China policy in places like Wolfsburg, Turin, Toulouse or Prague

I think it's becoming a fascinating case study in the limits of US as well as Chinese geopolitical power

It's what bothered me about the OP. EU and US stances towards China did not evolve in a vacuum. They crucially interacted with Japanese, Indian, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Australian, Philippines etc etc responses to the Jiang and Hu eras

In all these debates it is crucial to centre geoeconomic and geopolitical interests of local and regional actors counterbalancing against a wannabe (in this case Chinese) hegemon. Just looking at a US lens obscures as much as it reveals

Vietnam is an example. VCP tries to maintain strong party ties with CCP and sustain good trade relations with China, yet there is also nationalist public suspicion and military expansion in the SCS as insurance policy against Beijing. Before Trump this provided points of convergence with US stances

Keep in mind it is worth looking at the NatSec dimension beyond a US-centric lens. China's repositioning is also viewed as a geopolitical threat by many Asia-Pacific states that benefited from its rise, and are using growing prosperity driven by China to invest in military defence against it

It's trendier to study the 1990s. But one can trace so much about today's world back to the early-2010s.

- Dawn of multipolar age
- Xi and Modi rise to leadership
- Reordering of Middle East from within
- Russia annexes Crimea
- Euro-crisis roils Europe
- Smartphones & social media become dominant

Why I reckon a pretty plausible base case scenario might be Labour doing better than expectations now but not securing a majority, with Greens, Reform especially doing much better than their wildest dreams in 2024 but still disappointed as they underperform 2025/26 expectations.

There has to be another Senate vote, also situations where GOP discipline fractures in Congress

A generation or two ago the BBC would have produced a detailed multi-episode history of Syria's civil war in the style of Alan Little and Laura Silber's Death of Yugoslavia.

Now a BBC that is uninterested in detail and deeply risk averse and seems barely interested in that crucial information space

This in turn deepens a dynamic of 'MY side is poorly represented - why does that CRANK always get on?' when you have hot button debates largely discussed by people who are not fluent in the actual topic but are reciting talking points, often poorly.