While the presidents of both countries have pledged to deal with growing inequities, the US’ capitalist ethos makes government intervention a hard sell. In contrast to the flamboyant space voyages of US billionaires, China’s wealthy have been put on notice.

Authoritarian China has to loosen its grip to allow for a freer press. In America however, unchecked freedom has led to a crisis of authority and undermined the fourth estate’s capacity for fair and balanced reporting.

Increasingly tense US-China relations and fractious American politics are hampering the fight against climate change and Covid-19, among other pressing issues. Restoring the US’ steady leadership, which is vital to resolving today’s global problems, requires learning to peacefully coexist with China.

While China-made vaccines have been relegated to a secondary role in Malaysia over efficacy concerns, they are more readily available, affordable, and easier to administer, making them crucial in developing countries.

America needs to move past its monolithic vision of a world order centred on liberal democracy and recognise the legitimacy of other governance models. The inconvenient truth is that it is not the only ‘shining city upon a hill’.

As China’s economic and digital web continues to expand, the political establishment must adopt a more open posture. China’s political elite should overcome their reclusive impulses, open up further and make themselves better understood by an attentive yet wary world.

The crises the US faces are the outgrowth of a peculiar American world view shaped by Christianity’s monotheistic belief system. Until Americans can move past the myth of ‘American exceptionalism’, the US is unlikely to be able to coexist peaceably with the outside world.

Nurtured by Donald Trump, the Christian radical right – with its doomsday prophecies – threatens to bring civil war, deepen US rivalry with China and upend international relations and governance.

With American and Chinese universities abandoning any pretence of academic impartiality, Malaysia’s neutrality could provide a base for critical scholarship and impartial research through institutions like Xiamen University Malaysia.

The Southeast Asian nation’s Malay Muslim and Chinese Confucian communities are at odds, but have much common ground to work with.

Since the 1960s, when the US overcame Cold War differences with the Soviet Union to defeat smallpox, America has taken an illiberal, ethno-nationalistic turn. These dark undercurrents, stirred up by Trump, have made it harder for the US to set aside its differences and cooperate with China

China has woken up to its historical failure to shape how the world sees it. In the battle to influence global opinion, amid the US-China trade war, the Chinese community in Southeast Asia can help bridge the gap between East and West.

Malaysia has shown pragmatism in its approach to China and is uneasy with the US framing of its rivalry as a moral choice between good and evil.

China should exercise greater candidness and become a more open society, while America needs to confront its racial and ideological prejudices if they are to avoid the Thucydides Trap.

China’s Confucian heritage means it can tolerate multiple belief systems ‘under heaven’, but the US’ insistence on liberal democracy has echoes of Christian exclusivism.

China’s flexing of its academic muscles is to be welcomed, if its cooperation with others is fair and open. For its own sake, too, China must return to the roots of its tradition of pluralistic education, and free up space for critical learning.

Peter T.C. Chang writes that, 48 years after his book diagnosing the problems ethnic Malays faced, Mahathir Mohamad is once again leading a country where Malays are still mostly poor, despite a decades-old policy that has favoured them and angered other groups. Addressing both problems will be the great challenge of his term in office.