China's world leader desire may be blocked by America

AT his inauguration on Jan 20, President Donald Trump delivered an inward-looking speech in which he promised to "make America great again", without any reference to its friends and allies overseas.

Then Mr Trump withdrew the US from what he called the "job-killing" Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation trading bloc that sought to raise standards while excluding China. He also declared the North Atlantic alliance "obsolete".

This led to howls in Washington and overseas that the US was ceding ground to an expansionist China. Even so, the Chinese declared modestly that they had little interest in succeeding the US as global leader, with a senior Chinese diplomat, Zhang Jun, director-general of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's international economics department, asserting that China doesn't want to be the world leader but, if nobody else wanted that job, then China would, reluctantly, play that role.