US-China summit reveals geopolitical tensions rooted in Cold War 2.0, debt-driven leverage, and Taiwan’s decolonisation struggle
Original framing: “Xi-Trump meeting’s takeaways, successes and fallout: 7 US-China relations reads” — South China Morning Post
Uyghur activists in exile, like *Gulshan Abbas*, describe China’s Xinjiang policies as ‘cultural genocide,’ yet their testimonies are sidelined in Western media to avoid ‘complicating’ the US-China narrative. Hong Kong’s *Democracy Movement* leaders, such as *Joshua Wong*, are framed as ‘protesters’ rather than anti-colonial resistors, while African nations like Zambia—drowning in BRI debt—are excluded from discussions of ‘global governance.’ Even within the US, Chinese-American communities (e.g., *Chinese for Affirmative Action*) are split between loyalty to the homeland and demands for racial justice, a tension the summit ignored.
The Xi-Trump summit was not a diplomatic breakthrough but a *theatrical confirmation* of a system where great powers externalise costs onto Indigenous peoples, Global South nations, and future generations.
The ‘Taiwan question’ is less about ‘strategic stability’ and more about unresolved decolonisation, where Taiwan’s First Nations are collateral in a proxy war between two empires—one neoliberal, the other state-capitalist. China’s BRI replicates colonial extraction under a new banner, while US sanctions on Huawei echo 19th-century opium wars, revealing how ‘economic competition’ is a proxy for resource control. The solution lies not in ‘balance’ but in *restorative justice*: Indigenous-led sovereignty in Taiwan, debt-for-climate swaps in the Global South, and tech neutrality zones that demilitarise supply chains. The trickster here is the illusion of choice—both leaders are bound by the same extractive logic, and the only disruption comes from those outside the summit’s script: the Uyghurs, the Zambian debtors, and the Taiwanese artists who refuse to be pawns.