Donald and the Dragon

Let’s start with a bit of a quiz.

See if you can work out which statesman told a journalist from the Economist:

‘Relations with China are excellent.’

When asked by the journalist what the Chinese demanded in return for such excellent relations, he went on:

‘Nothing. That’s what’s so marvellous. They’re a fabulous partner. They ask for nothing in return. All they ask is that we don’t bother them.’

This is an unfamiliar picture of the Chinese dragon, isn’t it? What a mild-mannered, gentle dragon it seems to be. Not at all the picture painted by many in the West, and above all by Donald Trump, the would-be dragon slayer.

Trump and Xi Jinping

The odd thing is that the man who spoke so warmly of China isn’t someone you’d expect to make that kind of judgement. He’s a head of state and, in his campaign for election, he spoke much more dismissively of China, telling Bloomberg News, ‘We do not make agreements with Communists.’

Strange inconsistency, wouldn’t you say? In office, he’s taking a stance that is the opposite of where he stood while a candidate. What’s particularly odd about his judgement of China now, so contrary to Trump’s, is that he’s an outspoken supporter of the US President. He told the international meeting of the allegedly great and the good in Davos that Trump understands geopolitics very well (not a view I share) and uses tariffs as a strategic tool. He told the meeting:

It’s not that he’s protectionist. If you fail to understand the playing field that Trump is playing on, it will be hard to understand his vision. But the guidelines he is putting forward will create a much better world.

If you still can’t place the speaker, it may help to know that the last quote came from the Buenos Aires Times.

Yes, that’s right. This character is Javier Milei. That’s the very Trumpian president of Argentina. Which makes it fascinating that he has expressed such highly un-Trumpian, even contra-Trumpian, views of China.

Trump has just fired the first shot in a new round of a trade war with China. He’s just raised tariffs on Chinese exports to the US from the 10% he initially imposed to 20%. That’s alongside the 25% tariffs he’s now applying to imports from Canada and Mexico, even though it was he who negotiated a free trade agreement with both nations last time he was in office. Not exactly consistent between his two terms...

What’s more, during his campaign he claimed he would reduce prices. Applying tariffs will, however, raise them. Not exactly consistent in his promises. He’s been warned repeatedly that higher tariffs mean higher prices. Unfortunately, he doesn’t listen to people who tell him things he doesn’t want to hear. 

He also proclaims that applying tariffs to Chinese goods is the action of a strong man, putting Beijing in its place. But, as Milei’s comments make clear, the softly-softly approach of China – acting as a good partner and making no demands – works better than Trump’s throwing his weight about.

What’s more, Trump seems to be opening the door to China doing a lot more of that kind of quiet accumulation of influence. Cutting international aid to save a small proportion of US government spending will leave millions around the world in desperate need of help. It seems that, in South Africa alone, 500,000 lives are at risk from the withdrawal of US aid from the UN programme against HIV and Aids.

That’s a glorious opportunity for China to step in and buy itself some more clients, at little cost, by replacing the aid the US has cut off. It doesn’t even need to replace all of it, since replacing even a part will make the Chines look like generous donors and the Americans look like cheapskates. 

So far at least (and Taiwan may in the future prove an exception), China has extended its worldwide influence not by war but by investment. It’s funny to see how western capitalism has reacted with horror, since making investments and reaping the benefits is exactly what capitalism is about. I see plenty to object to in China, above all the fact that it’s a brutally repressive regime, to the extent of taking a genocidal approach to its Uyghur citizens in the west of the country. It’s headed by a man who has made himself dictator for life and surrounded himself with a personality cult. What I can’t see is how the West can honestly criticise it for working to extend its international reach by using the very tools of the capitalist free market that western politicians themselves promote.

Far from acting as a block to China’s continued and stealthy progress, Trump is giving it new opportunities. So it was fascinating to read an article reporting on the views of a former colonel in China’s army, Zhou Bo. Since the Chinese state seems to tolerate his expressing his ideas, I imagine they can’t be too different from those of the political leadership. He’s clear that America is a declining power. That decline, he suggests, is being hastened by Trump’s behaviour:

By the end of his second term, I believe America’s global image will simply become more tarnished, its international standing will just go down further

On the Ukraine war, Zhou said:

The US really holds the key to resolving this issue. China is definitely indispensable … China’s role will be there when it comes to the time of a ceasefire or armistice.

China as the indispensable power? Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. What seems certain to me is that if it’s even on the way to becoming indispensable, then it’s with Trump’s help.

Russia and China are both ugly dictatorships. In the past the US always opposed such regimes. Today, Trump seems intent on cultivating them and helping them advance. Far from Making America Great Again, he appears to be determined to abase America to make Russia and China great. Or, perhaps, the key to his behaviour is the belief that to be great, America needs to have just the same kind of dictatorial regime as they do.

Donald likes to preen himself as the man fighting the Chinese dragon. But is he just someone who fancies he could become a dragon himself?

Anniversary for Max

It’s been a year!

Eleven months ago, on 2 April 2024, I wrote to celebrate what I called the first Mensivary of the day that Max came to live with us, a month earlier. Today, 2 March 2025 and eleven months on, we’ve reached the first anniversary of that happy event.

Max, you may remember, is a dog of the classic Spanish hunting breed, the Podenco. Having a Podenco living with us is a pleasure in itself. It also underlines our integration into the life of our adopted country.

In the woods. Max in the light
Luci (left) and Toffee in the foreground

It’s been quite a year since he moved in. I mentioned last year that it was a week before we even heard Max bark. But he quickly learned from the fellow members of his new pack, our toy poodles Luci and Toffee, that barking is an essential part of greeting anyone who has the gall to walk past our house, front or back. When that happens, all three tear down to the appropriate gate and warn the potential intruder not to get too close to their territory.

At first, Max wouldn’t come upstairs. An internal staircase seemed to be an alien concept to him, which it may well have been, since he’d probably previously been a hunter’s dog. These days, he unhesitatingly comes upstairs to push my arm to stop me typing if, say, I’ve got too wrapped up in something on my computer to remember that it’s time to serve the dogs some food.

He also had no idea what to do with a couch. For a time he would only lie on the floor. But eventualy he decided that maybe he’d climb up onto one of the couches in our living room, the one at right angles to the longer one Danielle and I use to watch TV. Indeed, within a short time, he’d made it his own. Not that he’d aggressively stop other people sitting on it. It was simply that if they did, he’d leave. A couch, he seemed to think, wasn’t something to share.

But that soon changed. So he’d lie on the couch with, say, one of our sons if he was visiting. He’d apparently discovered that lying next to someone and sharing warmth with them was quite pleasant.

But that was still only a stage. The next step was to move onto our couch. At first he occupied one end, on his own. Sometimes with the girls.

Max masters the couch and shares it with his pack sisters

Then gradually he moved closer until he could lie pressed up tight against one or other of us.

The final stage, which he’s now reached, is when he moved right up to our end. Now, indeed, he likes to do what Luci does, and lie between us, touching one of us on each side. It’s been great to see him evolve like this, except that he represents rather more of an obstacle than, say, Luci, who’s significantly smaller. We just have to move him away, to maintain the tradition of foot massages for Danielle while we’re watching TV.

Moving close to us feels like a good thing. But getting between us is a step too far. It’s a further illustration of the principle that you can have too much of a good thing.

Out of doors, his assimilation to his pack has been just as good. As I said eleven months ago, he turns out to be that rare creature among Podencos, one that doesn’t run away. He hates being separated from us, in fact. 

There was one memorable moment when he did wander off into undergrowth in our local woods and, on returning to the path, mistakenly decided that Danielle and the other two dogs had walked on down it, as they usually did. At that time, we used to put a GPS on him, so Danielle could track him running faster and faster, down the path, getting further and further away. Then it must have dawned on him that his assumption had been incorrect. Danielle tracked him turning around and racing back up the path towards her. When he got close enough to hear her calling, he accelerated still further, charging through the woods to the place where she was waiting for him. He was obviously delighted – and no doubt relieved, for a dog abandoned by his earlier owner in the countryside – to have found his pack again.

Since that time, he’s been very careful not to get so far away from us that he doesn’t know where we’ve gone. In fact, even when off exploring, he dashes back now and then to make sure he can still find us. That generally works, though a couple of weeks ago his system broke down and he lost track of me and the poodles while we were walking in the woods. I spent some time looking for him while he, no doubt was looking for me. We’d stopped using the GPS on him and, for the first time for many months, I regretted it.

But then Danielle rang me from home.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘I’m fine,’ I replied, ‘just looking for Max.’

‘You can stop looking. He’s here. I was worried that something had happened to you and he’d come to warn me.’

It turns out that once home he’d rushed around the house, looking, Danielle reckoned, for the poodles and me. When he realised we weren’t there, he ran back to the garden gate and stood there, looking pitifully at Danielle, as though he wanted to be let out again. It was as though he felt bad at having left us behind.

When I got home, we had a fine celebratory reunion. I was pleased to find him again, but even more because he’d shown he knew the way home. What better proof could there be that he’d entirely integrated into his new home and family?

Sorry, I mean pack.

We’re celebrating the anniversary of his arrival. 

The enjoyment is all the greater because it’s that wonderful time of year again, here in the Northern Hemisphere, when the days get longer. And in our house, which is oriented east-west, that means that the front garden starts to fill with sun – well, on sunny days – in the afternoon. We had sun in December and January too, but it still wasn’t high in the sky. It warmed us if we were sitting on chairs, so we could have lunch outside in the depths of winter – a delight for Northerners like us – but it didn’t reach the dog beds we’d laid out on the ground.

That’s changed. The sun now gets high enough to shine in over the neighbour’s hedge. And, boy, are the dogs happy. Well, happiest of all is Max, who like most Spaniards, has the sun in his blood. Give him a chance to lie around in it, and he won’t wait to be asked twice.

Contented sun worshipper

Toffee, on the other hand, is English bred. From Lowestoft, in Suffolk, on the east coast. Like so many of the English in Spain, she’s excited by the sun and makes a beeline for it, like Max, when it appears, only to decide after a few minutes that maybe a little shade would be preferable. She too seems to realise that you can have too much of a good thing. 

Toffee too enjoying the warmth, but in the shade

Well, whether it’s Max’s revelling in sun worship or Toffee’s ‘so far but no further’ approach, for my part I’m simply comforted to see these signs of returning light and warmth. A fine way to greet Max’s first anniversary with us. And a huge boost to good mood after the (relative) cold of winter.

And in the world as it is today, any boost to good mood is to be treasured.