On Thursday, Donald Trump will walk into the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, shake Xi Jinping's hand, and declare it a great meeting. There will be announcements. There will be numbers — billions of dollars in Chinese purchase commitments, a new bilateral mechanism with an important-sounding name, possibly a joint statement on Iran. Trump will post on Truth Social. Markets will rally briefly. Pundits will argue about who won. None of that will tell you what actually happened. What is actually happening in Beijing this week is something more consequential and more uncomfortable than the summit theatre will reveal: two leaders of two deeply mutually dependent superpowers, both of whom need this meeting to succeed for entirely different reasons, sitting across a table in a world that has already moved past the assumptions that defined their last nine months of negotiations. The Iran war changed the equations. The rare earth gambit changed the power balance. Taiwan is sitting in...
Image Credit: ieatwords There is an interesting trending topic on Twitter today and it's called 'Titanic II'. The topic started trending after news broke that self-made Aussie mining billionaire Clive Palmer said the he has commissioned state-owned Chinese company CSC Jinling Shipyard to build the Titanic II with the same dimensions as its predecessor. Once ready the ship will make its first voyage from England to New York in 2016. Palmer has also said that Titanic 2 will be every bit as luxurious as the original but with the added benefits of state-of-the-art technology and modern navigation systems. With the Centenary anniversary coming up for the RMS Titanic there seems to be a flurry of activity to remember the doomed ship. There is also a TV episode set to air to bring newer insights and stories that might not have been heard till now. Mr Palmer also says that hits effort is a way to pay tribute to the spirit of the men and women who built the original ship. He ...