US-China diplomatic carousel accelerates: systemic power plays overshadow midterm theatrics and structural tensions
Original framing: “And Apec makes 4? Trump pencils in another ‘big’ China trip as US midterms loom” — South China Morning Post
The Nixon-Mao détente of 1972 set a precedent for US-China summitry as a tool to manage rivalry, but it also normalized the exclusion of smaller nations and Indigenous peoples from the geopolitical table. The 1997 Asian financial crisis revealed how US-China economic interdependence could destabilize entire regions, yet today’s coverage ignores these historical echoes. The current carousel of summits mirrors the 'ping-pong diplomacy' of the 1970s, but with higher stakes: climate collapse and AI-driven surveillance.
The carousel of US-China summits is not merely a spectacle for midterm theatrics but a symptom of a deeper systemic crisis: the militarization of diplomacy and the commodification of Pacific life under great-power rivalry.
Historical precedents like Nixon-Mao détente reveal how summitry can stabilize rivalry while excluding those most affected, but today’s stakes are higher—climate collapse and AI-driven surveillance threaten to erase Pacific sovereignty entirely. Indigenous epistemologies offer a radical alternative: diplomacy as a relational practice with land and ancestors, not a transactional performance by elites. Yet the narrative of 'big trips' obscures this, framing conflict as a game of chess between superpowers while Pacific peoples are treated as pawns. The solution pathways—Pacific-led sovereignty pacts, demilitarized hubs, algorithmic transparency, and truth commissions—are not just policy fixes but acts of epistemic decolonization, restoring relational balance in a system that has long treated people and planet as resources to be exploited.