2025-03-26
6 分钟The Economist. Hi, it's Alice Su here.
I co-host Drum Tower, our weekly podcast on China.
Here's an article handpicked from the latest edition of The Economist read out loud.
I thought you might enjoy it.
At negotiations last month in Jakarta on a deal to ease tensions in the South China Sea, the leader of the Chinese delegation opened by quoting Henry Kissinger.
It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, he told his counterparts, but it is fatal to be its friend.
Kissinger's words at the height of the Vietnam War were taken out of context.
He was warning America against turning on its allies in Asia, lest it come to be seen as unreliable, rather than suggesting that it had a perfidious streak.
But that will be little consolation to countries such as the Philippines, which depend upon America to defend them in the South China Sea.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Chinese diplomats have been keen to highlight America's missteps.
There are two lines of attack.
To America's allies, they argue that Mr. Trump cannot be trusted.
For countries of the Global South, they have a different message.
If every country emphasized its own interests and worshiped the status of its own power, Wang Yi, China's foreign minister said on March 7, the world would regress to the law of the jungle, where small and weak countries would be the first to suffer.
The irony of Mr Wang's critique has not been lost on diplomats from small states in Asia who remember his predecessor saying in a discussion over the South China Sea that China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that's just a fact.
Facing new tariffs from Mr Trump and the risk of an America more hostile on issues such as Taiwan, you might expect China to be wooing Asian countries just now.
A charm offensive like that which China launched more than 20 years ago under President Jiang Zemin would seek to tidy up ties, not least by resolving several territorial disputes and build up a reservoir of goodwill in anticipation of tensions with America.
Yet charm has been oddly absent from Chinese diplomacy in recent weeks.
Instead, China seems to see this as a moment of vulnerability for many American allies and partners during which it has adjusted its rhetoric to exploit distress at Mr. Trump's words and actions.
It has resisted concessions or new diplomatic and development initiatives of the sort offered under previous charm offensive.