What is urgently needed now is much better understanding between China and the West. For its part, the West needs to develop a better perspective on China’s rising global influence. In particular, we need to recognise that China has traditionally seen itself as the centre of the civilised world and, with necessary modern modifications, still does. I refer your readers to C.P. Fitzgerald’s book, The Chinese View of their Place in the World, published in 1964, which still has relevance for us today. Given this view, a certain assertiveness in Chinese foreign policy is understandable. Having been pushed around by the West in the century before last – and given the number of Western military bases in our region now – a certain amount of Chinese assertiveness is unsurprising. However, China does need to get away from its Trump-like bellicose anti-Western statements that now seem characteristic of its new, overly assertive , foreign policy statements. And it needs a more flexible – a more nuanced – approach to the West. Australia and China have the potential for a common cause here. For the unpalatable truth for both countries is that the US is currently led by an unstable and unpredictable president who is as much a problem for us in Australia as it is for those in China. Both China and Australia need to find a way around the Trump problem. And they need to play a long game here if they are to restore and preserve our good relationship. The incompetent President Donald Trump won’t be in office indefinitely and the time will come when a rational leader will be in charge of America. It would assist China greatly in restoring and securing our hitherto sound bilateral relationship for it to better understand the enormously strong historic relationship between Australia and the US, that arose from the very substantial US role in defending us against Japanese aggression in the 1940s. Here in Australia, the cautious China approach of former foreign minister Julie Bishop was much more effective than that of the Scott Morrison government – tied as that is too closely to Trump’s ham-fisted approach to China. Australia’s recent fractious utterances aimed at China have been unnecessarily provocative and out of perspective. China’s assertiveness is well short of the imperial conquest of European countries, Japan and the US in the past, and our political leaders must stop overreacting to it. Terry Hewton, Adelaide