The US now sees China as an equal - it is time for Western media to wake up and do the same
China was long filed under “too foreign, too dangerous, too different” in many Western newsrooms. Not anymore. Beijing is now impossible to ignore, and only now are many Western media outlets starting to realise it.
A phenomenon noted by Beijing-based current affairs commentator Jianlu Bi in March this year in the South China Morning Post, the annual spectacle of China’s “two sessions”, was treated in Western newsrooms as a political theatre piece of sorts - performed on a stage of secrecy and state control.
Foreign correspondents would often - and still do for the most part - file dispatches heavy with scepticism, searching for cracks behind the slogans. Yet this year, a quiet shift was evident. This came not in the form of a softening of the smirks behind the copy, but a recalibration in recognition of Beijing’s progress.
China’s economic machine is still watched with hawk-like intensity, but the tone in major Western outlets is no longer uniformly acid, Bi says. In research he conducted with colleagues monitoring keyword trends across 10 leading UK and US media outlets a pattern was noticed. In 2019, around 70% of stories on the Chinese economy, tech sector or environmental policy came across with a negative tone. Six years later, however, that number had dropped to around 40%.
According to Bi, the number of neutral reports are rising across all areas with positive-toned economic coverage also edging up.
Commenting on the same issue, albeit slightly more directly, a former resident of China and Bne partner, Arnaud Bertrand, posting on X recently said “Even The Economist, the poster child of “China bad” coverage who hilariously have predicted China’s collapse almost every year for the past 3 decades, entitled their latest issue “Why China is winning the trade war,” before adding, somewhat sardonically “Quite the incredible reversal of narrative to anyone familiar with their editorial line.”
The shift is not, as Bi suggests, a sudden bout of media admiration. Rather, Western newsrooms covering China, Japan and South Korea - long dominated by a revolving cast of veteran correspondents shuttling between ‘Far East’ postings and Western capitals - are being dragged, somewhat reluctantly, into the present.
That they are being forced to come face-to-face with a more layered understanding of China’s economic and technological heft does not always go down well.
Media seen as de-facto representatives of their nations by governments across Asia are no longer able to dismiss China’s performance as scripted or superficial. The numbers tell their own story, and they are becoming harder and harder to wave away.
In 2024, consumption drove nearly half of China’s GDP expansion - outpacing both investment and exports. Electric vehicle (EV) uptake soared by roughly 40% year-on-year, powered by an aggressive state strategy to boost domestic demand. This sector in particular shows no sign of abating any time soon and is booming across much of East and Southeast Asia. Special sovereign bonds and “trade-in” drives are being deployed not as throwaway gimmicks, Bi adds, but as pillars in a coordinated push to keep households spending and businesses moving.
Meanwhile, in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the corridors of Brussels, another reality is setting in: China’s technology ecosystem is no longer merely “catching up”. It is competing, and, in some sectors, leading.
The startling rise of domestic AI models like DeepSeek, alongside the continued surge of Huawei are two key examples cited. Both have forced Western capitals to acknowledge that the global innovation race is no longer a one-horse sprint to the finish. There will never be a finish and a nation like China, used to playing the long-game, knows this and plans accordingly. To this end, with in excess of four million 5G base stations now operational around the country, China’s digital infrastructure is expanding at a clip Western telecom planners can only dream of. That it may – or may not – be used for purposes such as monitoring populations in some areas, while a valid story in itself, needs to be tempered when covering the bigger picture.
Then there is the climate front. China today produces a reported 80% or so of the world’s solar panels. This is a phenomenal industrial dominance that gives Beijing what many in the West looking for the negative angle deem unfair leverage over the global energy transition. The country’s EV and hybrid vehicle market is also booming and as a result is rewriting the international auto market.
Added to this, for Western policymakers scrambling to meet emissions targets, China is no longer simply a polluter to criticise through media friends. Instead, Beijing must be seen as a competitor, a supplier and, increasingly, a benchmark – and this is happening - slowly.
Western critics by way of their domestic media outlets with international reach do, quite rightly, still point to coal use as a problem in China. Yet while China’s fossil fuel dependence remains a gaping contradiction in its green narrative, to pretend its renewable push is cosmetic is to ignore the largest expansion of clean-energy capacity anywhere on Earth.
Crucially, China’s model contrasts sharply with the policy spasms seen in Washington, where tariff whiplash and election-cycle politics create whirling uncertainty. Beijing’s long-range planning - rigid to a fault, critics argue - nevertheless offers a stability increasingly valued by investors weary of ideological left-right lurches in the West and associated supply-chain tantrums.
For Western media, the challenge is therefore less ideological and more existential: how to report China with rigour without defaulting to reflexive derision. As Bertrand says “Multipolarity makes understanding mandatory: the West can no longer afford the luxury of misunderstanding China. The cost has become too high.”
One individual of note with an apparent understanding to this end is US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. Posting on X on November 2, Hegseth wrote “I just spoke to President Trump, and we agree - the relationship between the United States and China has never been better” continuing “Following President Trump’s historic meeting with Chairman Xi in South Korea, I had an equally positive meeting with my counterpart, China’s Minister of National Defense Admiral Dong Jun in Malaysia. And we spoke again last night. The Admiral and I agree that peace, stability, and good relations are the best path for our two great and strong countries.”
That two of the most powerful men in the Western hemisphere - Trump and Hegseth - are waking up to China as an equal is groundbreaking, and must be treated as such. No longer can the US or wider Western world or its media, look down on Beijing.
Whether Hegseth’s next claim that “As President Trump said, his historic “G2 meeting” set the tone for everlasting peace and success for the US and China. The Department of War will do the same - peace through strength, mutual respect, and positive relations” proves true in the long-run will be for future generations and journalists to comment upon.
When Hegseth then closed “The Department of War will do the same - peace through strength, mutual respect, and positive relations. Admiral Dong and I also agreed that we should set up military-to-military channels to deconflict and de-escalate any problems that arise. We have more meetings on that coming soon” it is at least an indicator that the man with the US' nuclear launch codes is viewing China as on a par with the US.
How this ends up being reported by CNN, Fox, and the New York Times stateside vis-a-vis Jianlu Bi’s positive VS negative China-reporting breakdown though, will only be apparent as the week unfolds.
For now, as long-time China watchers in Asia are well aware, the country is not collapsing, and will not collapse in the future. Nor is it conquering the world. And as any long-time journalist covering the region worth his or her salt will explain - perhaps in hushed tones if on an all-expenses paid Western media posting - China is evolving. So too must the global conversation around it, both in government circles and through the media.
China was long filed under “too foreign, too dangerous, too different” in many Western newsrooms. Not anymore. Beijing is now impossible to ignore, and only now are many Western media outlets starting to realise it.
A phenomenon noted by Beijing-based current affairs commentator Jianlu Bi in March this year in the South China Morning Post, the annual spectacle of China’s “two sessions”, was treated in Western newsrooms as a political theatre piece of sorts - performed on a stage of secrecy and state control.
Foreign correspondents would often - and still do for the most part - file dispatches heavy with scepticism, searching for cracks behind the slogans. Yet this year, a quiet shift was evident. This came not in the form of a softening of the smirks behind the copy, but a recalibration in recognition of Beijing’s progress.
China’s economic machine is still watched with hawk-like intensity, but the tone in major Western outlets is no longer uniformly acid, Bi says. In research he conducted with colleagues monitoring keyword trends across 10 leading UK and US media outlets a pattern was noticed. In 2019, around 70% of stories on the Chinese economy, tech sector or environmental policy came across with a negative tone. Six years later, however, that number had dropped to around 40%.
According to Bi, the number of neutral reports are rising across all areas with positive-toned economic coverage also edging up.
Commenting on the same issue, albeit slightly more directly, a former resident of China and Bne partner, Arnaud Bertrand, posting on X recently said “Even The Economist, the poster child of “China bad” coverage who hilariously have predicted China’s collapse almost every year for the past 3 decades, entitled their latest issue “Why China is winning the trade war,” before adding, somewhat sardonically “Quite the incredible reversal of narrative to anyone familiar with their editorial line.”
The shift is not, as Bi suggests, a sudden bout of media admiration. Rather, Western newsrooms covering China, Japan and South Korea - long dominated by a revolving cast of veteran correspondents shuttling between ‘Far East’ postings and Western capitals - are being dragged, somewhat reluctantly, into the present.
That they are being forced to come face-to-face with a more layered understanding of China’s economic and technological heft does not always go down well.
Media seen as de-facto representatives of their nations by governments across Asia are no longer able to dismiss China’s performance as scripted or superficial. The numbers tell their own story, and they are becoming harder and harder to wave away.
In 2024, consumption drove nearly half of China’s GDP expansion - outpacing both investment and exports. Electric vehicle (EV) uptake soared by roughly 40% year-on-year, powered by an aggressive state strategy to boost domestic demand. This sector in particular shows no sign of abating any time soon and is booming across much of East and Southeast Asia. Special sovereign bonds and “trade-in” drives are being deployed not as throwaway gimmicks, Bi adds, but as pillars in a coordinated push to keep households spending and businesses moving.
Meanwhile, in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the corridors of Brussels, another reality is setting in: China’s technology ecosystem is no longer merely “catching up”. It is competing, and, in some sectors, leading.
The startling rise of domestic AI models like DeepSeek, alongside the continued surge of Huawei are two key examples cited. Both have forced Western capitals to acknowledge that the global innovation race is no longer a one-horse sprint to the finish. There will never be a finish and a nation like China, used to playing the long-game, knows this and plans accordingly. To this end, with in excess of four million 5G base stations now operational around the country, China’s digital infrastructure is expanding at a clip Western telecom planners can only dream of. That it may – or may not – be used for purposes such as monitoring populations in some areas, while a valid story in itself, needs to be tempered when covering the bigger picture.
Then there is the climate front. China today produces a reported 80% or so of the world’s solar panels. This is a phenomenal industrial dominance that gives Beijing what many in the West looking for the negative angle deem unfair leverage over the global energy transition. The country’s EV and hybrid vehicle market is also booming and as a result is rewriting the international auto market.
Added to this, for Western policymakers scrambling to meet emissions targets, China is no longer simply a polluter to criticise through media friends. Instead, Beijing must be seen as a competitor, a supplier and, increasingly, a benchmark – and this is happening - slowly.
Western critics by way of their domestic media outlets with international reach do, quite rightly, still point to coal use as a problem in China. Yet while China’s fossil fuel dependence remains a gaping contradiction in its green narrative, to pretend its renewable push is cosmetic is to ignore the largest expansion of clean-energy capacity anywhere on Earth.
Crucially, China’s model contrasts sharply with the policy spasms seen in Washington, where tariff whiplash and election-cycle politics create whirling uncertainty. Beijing’s long-range planning - rigid to a fault, critics argue - nevertheless offers a stability increasingly valued by investors weary of ideological left-right lurches in the West and associated supply-chain tantrums.
For Western media, the challenge is therefore less ideological and more existential: how to report China with rigour without defaulting to reflexive derision. As Bertrand says “Multipolarity makes understanding mandatory: the West can no longer afford the luxury of misunderstanding China. The cost has become too high.”
One individual of note with an apparent understanding to this end is US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. Posting on X on November 2, Hegseth wrote “I just spoke to President Trump, and we agree - the relationship between the United States and China has never been better” continuing “Following President Trump’s historic meeting with Chairman Xi in South Korea, I had an equally positive meeting with my counterpart, China’s Minister of National Defense Admiral Dong Jun in Malaysia. And we spoke again last night. The Admiral and I agree that peace, stability, and good relations are the best path for our two great and strong countries.”
That two of the most powerful men in the Western hemisphere - Trump and Hegseth - are waking up to China as an equal is groundbreaking, and must be treated as such. No longer can the US or wider Western world or its media, look down on Beijing.
Whether Hegseth’s next claim that “As President Trump said, his historic “G2 meeting” set the tone for everlasting peace and success for the US and China. The Department of War will do the same - peace through strength, mutual respect, and positive relations” proves true in the long-run will be for future generations and journalists to comment upon.
When Hegseth then closed “The Department of War will do the same - peace through strength, mutual respect, and positive relations. Admiral Dong and I also agreed that we should set up military-to-military channels to deconflict and de-escalate any problems that arise. We have more meetings on that coming soon” it is at least an indicator that the man with the US' nuclear launch codes is viewing China as on a par with the US.
How this ends up being reported by CNN, Fox, and the New York Times stateside vis-a-vis Jianlu Bi’s positive VS negative China-reporting breakdown though, will only be apparent as the week unfolds.
For now, as long-time China watchers in Asia are well aware, the country is not collapsing, and will not collapse in the future. Nor is it conquering the world. And as any long-time journalist covering the region worth his or her salt will explain - perhaps in hushed tones if on an all-expenses paid Western media posting - China is evolving. So too must the global conversation around it, both in government circles and through the media.
Trump makes fools of Britain’s China hawks – Steve Howell
By Steve Howell
The US and China surprised almost everyone last week by calling off their trade war – for now at least. The summit between presidents Xi and Trump ended with both parties dropping plans for tougher trade restrictions and tariffs. Asked to evaluate it on a scale of one to ten, Trump said that he thought “it was a 12.”
This was awkward for the British media. For weeks, they had been pumping out headlines on what they called the China spy scandal – the collapse of the prosecution two men accused of passing information to China. There were virtually no dissenters to the view that the charges being dropped was bad news. The only issue for the media was who to blame for the failure to convict the two defendants, as if the small matter of their actual guilt was not in doubt.
For the prosecution to go ahead, Britain had to have deemed China to be an enemy to which passing information would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act. The conservatives accused the government of deliberately withholding from the Crown Prosecution Service the evidence of enemy status needed for a conviction. The government countered that the conservatives had not classified China as an enemy when they were in power.
From my survey of the media, Keir Starmer came off worst. Fairly typical headlines were the Times’s “China spy fiasco reveals cowardice at No 10” and the Telegraph’s “Starmer’s abject China cowardice threatens the West’s very future.” For the Daily Mail, columnist Dan Hodges asked: “How could Keir Starmer get away with lying about China when Boris Johnson was hauled over the coals for a piece of cake?”
Amid these accusations of lying and cowardice, there was at least a little levity from one journalist. Tom Peck, the political sketch writer for the Times, took us back to 2015 when China was seen as Britain’s economic saviour and David Cameron took President Xi for a pint at a pub near Chequers. “The whole point of that exercise,” Peck wrote, “was to prove that China definitely wasn’t a threat, but the chairman never actually got his round in, did he, so the clues were there.”
That pub visit came at a time when the West generally was eager to get a slice of the surplus capital China had been accumulating since being admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2000. Not long afterwards, however, the political climate in the US shifted markedly. In the build up to the US elections of 2016, both Bernie Sanders and Trump – from very different perspectives – made cheap imports from China an issue and blamed them for the de-industrialisation of the Midwest ‘rust belt’ states. On being elected, Trump introduced the first wave of tariffs on China, marking the start of a new Washington consensus that President Biden not only continued but escalated.
True to form, Britain fell into line. Xi was not invited again. The friendly images in the media were replaced by scaremongering over China attacking our infrastructure and stealing our technology (as if they needed to). Voices in the media and business favouring trade were drowned out or denounced as Beijing apologists and useful idiots.
Amid the furore over the China ‘spy’ case, our commentariat appears not to have noticed the emerging change of policy in Washington. To be fair, Trump’s rhetoric is sometimes difficult to read. So, it’s perhaps understandable that journalists peddling an anti-China have been wrong-footed. The Telegraph’s Sherelle Jacobs was certainly caught out badly, having written shortly before the summit that the government’s “refusal to break with China has explosive geopolitical implications.” She thought that Britain’s “inaction over China” could send Trump “over the edge” and claimed that “if anything ends up destroying the Special Relationship it will be our gutless cosying up to Beijing.” She must have been mortified when Trump described his meeting with Xi as “the G2 summit”, relegating the G7 – of which Britain is a member – to second class status.
Britain’s most strident China hawk, Iain Duncan-Smith, seems – for now – to have gone to ground. On Thursday, as news was breaking of the Trump-Xi summit success, the former Tory leader was still attacking Starmer for refusing to define China as a “systemic threat” and speaking darkly of “an axis of totalitarian states” with China “at the heart.”
Duncan-Smith’s hope had been that Trump would set aside his ‘America first’ pragmatism and join the crusade to confront China. In an interview with Sky during the US president’s state visit to Britain in September, he said that if the countries that believe in “freedom, democracy and the rule of law” don’t unite “the totalitarian states… will dominate the world and it will be a terrible world to live in.”
This is rich, even by Duncan-Smith’s standards. He apparently thinks that the rule of law means people are guilty of spying until proven innocent, even if – judging by the leaks – the evidence amounts to no more than allegations of passing on Westminster gossip for no remuneration. And, given his strident support for Israel, he probably does not care that the world is already terrible to live in for those Gazans who have managed to survive two years of genocidal slaughter by a country that, in his world, is one of the good guys.
Duncan-Smith is a leading light in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which was set up in 2000 to “confront” the rise of China and promote the interests of Taiwan. No doubt he was pleased that, while Trump was in China, Taiwan’s president was hosting a delegation from AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. In a post on X, Lai Ching-te said he looked forward closer Taiwan-US-Israel cooperation to “deepen strategic partnerships, invest in advanced technology and enhance our defense capabilities.” That does not sound to me like an axis that would promote democracy and the rule of law.
It remains to be seen what Trump’s China game plan is. The trade agreement arising from his summit with Xi has yet to be finalised. There is talk of Xi visiting Washington. Whatever happens, a couple of things are clear. Firstly, Britain’s long-standing policy – whoever occupies Downing Street – of hanging on to America’s coat-tails is a recipe for being badly bruised when there is a sudden change of direction. Secondly, if the US has had to treat China with respect, it is absurd for Britain to act as if it is ready to send gun-boats up the Yangtze again.
Britain needs trading partners. You do not have to be a fan of the USA’s billionaire-dominated politics or its endless wars to recognise that Britain should trade with the world’s largest economy. Equally, you do not have to be a fan of China’s one-party system or its friendly relations with Russia to believe that it is important to engage constructively with the world’s second largest economy. Trade is not only essential for the growth and jobs, it can also foster greater understanding between nations. The danger with trade wars is that they can lead to deadly ones.
- Steve’s new book, ‘Cold War Puerto Rico: Anti-Communism in Washington’s Caribbean Colony’, will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press on May 1, 2026. The book is already available for pre-order through major retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Waterstones. The recommended retail price for the paperback is $34.95 but UK pre-orders via Steve’s website are at the special price of £20 including postage. The publisher is also offering a 20% discount for pre-orders via their website by using the code UMASS20.
- Steve Howell is a journalist, author and former political adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. You can follow him on Twitter/X and subscribe to The Rest is Bullshit for regular updates and analysis from Steve.
- This article was originally published on The Rest is Bullshit on 2 November 2025.
By Paul Wallis
EDITOR AT LARGE
October 31, 2025
US President Donald Trump (L) and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands as they arrive for talks at the Gimhae Air Base, located next to the Gimhae International Airport in Busan on October 30, 2025 - Copyright AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
After the massive buildup and post-match analyses to the Xi-Trump meeting, a few details have been ironed out but not folded. The actual outcome was somewhat underwhelming. Trump backed away from his tariff position. Xi essentially stuck to pure diplomacy.
Xinhua produced a truly seamless report on the meeting, highlighting Xi’s points without excessive detail. It’s a pleasure to read and very well done. The net takeaway from that report could be used as a template for PR graduates.
Trump was quoted as saying that “The United States and China have always had a fantastic relationship, and it will be even better,” as faithfully recorded by Xinhua.
Another possible source of revenue for Xinhua could be courses in applied tact. That vibe also set the tone for the meeting.
The actual outcome of the meeting was a softening of images, not necessarily of positions. The contrast between Trump’s on-again/off-again positions couldn’t be clearer. Many commentaries say China “won” the meeting.
That may well be a massive understatement. China has absolutely nothing to gain from endless bickering and pedantry over minor trade issues. The US has lots to lose by any further perception of inflexibility in its trade positions. This meeting provided a good excuse for the Chinese to make their point softly, and the US to reposition from an unworkable stance.
The overall impression is that China is playing a long game, most importantly not getting derailed or distracted. China was at APEC; Trump didn’t bother to stick around. APEC is a sort of de facto trade forum for the Southeast Asian region. This is the neighborhood for Xi, but not for Trump.
There’s quite a lot of talk in various unofficial Chinese media about US bullying. That may be a polite description of the antiquated, totally US-centric world view espoused by America’s invaluable flunkies
There are 8 billion people on this planet. 340 million of them claim to be Americans or are hoping to be. 1.4 billion are Chinese. Time is passing, and the world is moving on, with or without the benefit of melodramatic plutobrat politics in the US.
Modern world trade can’t work on the basis of 1950s economics and geopolitical nostalgia. The long game makes perfect sense, particularly if you can call the shots like a gigantic economy. China has its issues, sure, but so does the US.
The directionless, incredibly tiresome US soap opera can only last so long. People want to have lives and make money. That’s not happening. The domestic mess is the top priority for a huge cleanup. It doesn’t take a PhD in knitting to see that something has to go.
This idiotic global economic guessing game can only go on for so long, and no longer. This meeting made that clear.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
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