Illustration: Chau Luong for Bloomberg
An Untethered Trump Is Expanding Xi’s Sphere of Influence
By hollowing out the rules-based order, the US president is pushing middle powers to hedge, and giving Beijing an opening it didn’t have before.
At the height of the pandemic in November 2021, seven people in surgical masks posed awkwardly next to a sign with lettering so small it was tough to read even in the photo that Taiwan triumphantly blasted around the world.
The humdrum opening of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania, one of the European Union’s smallest nations, belied the seismic impact it would have on two of the world’s biggest economic powers. As China restricted trade and investment flows to the former Soviet state for boosting ties with a territory claimed by Beijing, the European Union moved to pass a law that would allow a swift and forceful response to any economic coercion.