IF YOU are a veteran editor of an American newspaper, you will have to admit that sometimes when stocks take a dive or when wildfires rage in California during the summer, you toy with the idea of posting the old pics that you have in the archives - of stunned traders at the New York Stock Exchange in 2008 or of fires burning forests in southern California last year. After all, the new pics would look exactly like the old ones; no one would recognise the difference.

Indeed, when it comes to the news cycles and to political seasons, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Take, for example, American presidential elections. Much of what Republican and Democratic candidates say today sounds similar to what previous candidates stated in the last presidential campaign: the pledges to make America "great again", to help those who "have been left behind", and to "unite our country".

And then there is the China bashing. Since the end of the Cold War and the start of the slump of the Japanese economy, and after China rejoined the global economy two decades ago, Beijing has replaced Moscow and Tokyo as America's leading global geostrategic adversary and geoeconomic competitor.