It is not just Russia...

So say the highly intelligent, err, US intelligence agencies.


The USA is in a real bind with China.


On the one hand, China creates the mass market products that keep the American consumer market on the road, including the all-American Apple Iphone X - 100% China made of course by Foxconn.
The Chinese also finance this trade by being the willing buyer of trillions of dollars worth of US T-bills. So much so, that it has become a truly symbiotic relationship wherein unpicking it would really hurt both parties.


But China has also made many of its gains through stealth, subterfuge and outright theft. It's brand new FC-31 fighter is a copy of the US F-35 - America's own newest jet fighter. China stole the plans via industrial espionage. In the corporate world, most manufacturing companies from the West managed to destroy themselves in China, where with no intellectual property protection, their products were copied and delivered more cheaply with no recourse. Far fewer Western companies go to China now, the flow has turned the other way (which kind of works too, those expensive flats in Mayfair needed cocky buyers too....).


Moreover, just today the US is calling out China to be on a par with Russia in terms of a state threat. Not because it is as aggressive, but because it is so much richer and has its vast human intelligence network that Russia lacks.


Militarily too, there is no doubt China could defend its Eastern Hemisphere now from an US attack. It is 10 years since the Chinese sub famously emerged in the middle of the US 5th Fleet off Taiwan, since then they have been busy building even quitter nuclear and diesel subs and better missiles (recently tested in Syria by the Iranians, natch).


So what can the US do, one thing in their favour is that as much as the Chinese detest the West and still harbour deep hatred for the colonial period, they don't much care for the rest of the world beyond it being a source of raw materials. Not for China a global peacekeeper role. For all the talk of the Belt and Road, it is an aggressive economic strategy with little military input. Compare and contrast to the USA post 1945 with bases left and indeed, expanded, around the world.


China has problems at home too in the medium term as it tries to adapt its one-party rule state to the internet age and an impossibly large population to control. But time is on China's side.


How Trump and the US deal with China, always a canny negotiator (see since this month how European oil prices have increased after China/Russia agreed to reduce supplies going West and send them East instead), will be interesting to watch. No President yet has got it right, Trump at least tried with his Syria strike whilst dining with President Li.


What would you do?