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China's ASEAN outreach: What's fuelling its strong regional push?

The telephonic rendezvous signalled that the long-fractured US-China relationship might just be warming again.

Yet anyone betting on a clean reset knows better: the global trade landscape is no longer a stable highway, but a fast-moving express lane riddled with policy landmines, tariff traps, and strategic detours. In the given scenario, China cannot afford to bet its future on Washington’s unpredictable tariff theatrics, and perhaps as it would have been, the country is strengthening its relations with partners who can promise both scale and stability.