Instead of understanding Beijing on its own terms, the basis for peaceful coexistence, US officials are talking up a new cold war and risking conflict.

While high-level dialogue is critical, a breakthrough in cooperation on major issues – even climate change – is unlikely. It’s up to the rest of us to forge relations outside politics to create the momentum for peace.

The relaunch of an exceptional American democratic spirit cannot proceed apace without more self-reflection. Biden may be well-meaning, but the US must get under control the debilitating delusion that it is a nation of the highest virtue.

China should make it known a fresh start with the Biden administration is its top foreign policy priority, tone down its rhetoric and take the lead at the United Nations to reform the Security Council in the spirit of global citizenship.

John le Carré’s fiction, set during the Cold War, can easily be a platform for understanding the current frost between Beijing and Washington. Will the two sides understand that they are not that different, after all?

Back in 1998, China and the US were led by pragmatic, realistic leaders who were capable of patient diplomacy and adult give and take. While it is hard to imagine Xi and Biden getting along like Jiang and Clinton did, one can hope.

Mutual demonisation has no place in China-US diplomacy and will produce nothing good. Patriotism without modulation on both sides could trigger a chain of events that eludes the control of their manipulators.

After decades of bad choices, if the US now concludes it has a China problem in Asia, it is in part of its own making. Now is the time for Biden to rebuild the State Department, make the right appointments, re-engage and reassess foreign policy.

Years of living outrageously under Trump have grated on almost everyone’s nerves as he has launched a losing trade war and blamed China for internal problems. Any president who cannot understand the importance of good China relations is not fit to lead.

The scourge of the pandemic alone requires considerable recalculation that a Biden administration must pursue, and Beijing must lend its support.

Getting it right between China and the United States means looking for new sources of insight, not pumping more steroids into old stereotypes. Despite the rapid downturn in relations, the payoff in rising above pre-existing notions could be priceless.

A nation bound by shame is in need of a new deal of access and opportunity that carries on the hope Ginsburg helped inspire.

Xi Jinping has hailed China’s return to being a dominant military power. As China’s leaders swell with pride, though, they run the risk of failing to see themselves as others are starting to see them – as prideful and pushy.

Students – and the rest of the world – would appreciate a workable plan to escape the calamity of entrenched policy silos, where nation-states never rise above juggling their own interests.

The two-act plot of November’s presidential election must play out before US foreign policy can reboot, leading to an enervating waiting game. The best that even thoughtful US observers can do is wait for whoever or whatever is to come.

US secretary of state’s recycling of Reagan-era phrase shows some ideas are too good to retire, especially in the absence of new ones. Neither China nor the US appear to care what anyone thinks, leading to a perfect storm of distrust and communication failures.

International students at US universities are a core arsenal of American soft power. By closing its doors, the Trump administration undermines America’s stature as a responsible stakeholder in global affairs.

Political judgment takes time to mature. Up against the sledgehammer of a mandated national security law, the city’s pro-democracy protesters should avoid confrontation with Beijing to win themselves the time and space to grow up.

Both Beijing and Washington are retreating to old patterns – of US-bashing or China-bashing. The two countries must move away from rivalry and understand their differences as problems that have solutions.

American administrations have too often given in to the urge to stick their nose in other countries’ affairs without the intent or ability to follow through. The US would be better off dealing with its own inequality and inept governance than scolding Beijing over how it handles Hong Kong.

Beijing should leave the painful past behind and rise above Western demonisation to seize China’s moment in history. A rethink of its aggressive foreign policy, over-the-top propaganda and tight grip on Hong Kong and Taiwan is in order.

Pointing the finger at China or anyone else misses the point: a pandemic takes widespread ineptitude across all ideologies to scale up to a murderous leviathan. Both Xi Jinping and Donald Trump could have dealt better with the crisis.

Academic Kishore Mahbubani’s latest book again makes the case that the West should not try to stop the inevitable Chinese resurgence and should instead try to work with it. Conflict with China is a confrontation the West cannot afford to wage, or lose.

Between the self-certain scientists and the voluble president, who should take charge during the Covid-19 crisis? To give credit where it’s due, Donald Trump’s wish for an end to lockdown measures is politically sound.

When students on spring break rebel against social distancing measures, it may be because the US administration does not inspire trust. Although Trump fancies himself a ‘wartime president’, he doesn’t quite understand the enemy he is up against.

The insights of quantum physics urge us to contemplate the unthinkable, and such out-of-the-box thinking is just what’s needed to get the epidemic under control. We had better trust science, rather than politics, to lead us out of the crisis.

The world must change in the aftermath of the epidemic. Might a new political psychology accommodate more serious science and less narrow-minded nationalism? Blaming China for the outbreak misses the point that nations are in this together.

Following Donald Trump’s impeachment trial and in the run-up to the presidential election, the US seems set for an outbreak of rage and partisan politics. Americans must ensure the political virus of fascism remains contained.

Xi Jinping has expanded the reach of the Communist Party and ignored Deng Xiaoping’s advice for China to lie low as it grows economically. Despite Western unease at China’s trajectory, the world must extend to the country the help it needs at this critical juncture.

In the best-case scenario, Trump will be voted out of office this year. In the worst case, Trump’s America and eight other nuclear powers might bring the world to the brink of disaster. All it takes, as Iran has shown, is ‘human error’.