In April 2026, President Donald Trump will undertake a trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Most observers view the visit as a symbolic but significant reaffirmation of China’s rise in the world order that is reshaping geopolitics today, and in the short and medium term future.

This visit comes just over 50 years after President Richard Nixon’s pathbreaking visit in 1972 which was aimed at using China as an American wedge in the US escalating confrontation with the Soviet Union, at that time entering its most heated and dangerous phase.

The event and following developments have been regarded as one of the most significant strategic pivots of the 20th century. Although propagated to the public as a “peace mission”, it was a calculated move in realpolitik by the U.S., then undoubted leader of the world order, to reshape the Cold War’s power structure and to reinforce the American position.

Today, the Trump visit comes at a time when the U.S. has fallen from its high  perch in the world order. It signals the end of the post-WWII binary world and the  arrival of a multipolar era where the U.S. must negotiate its status especially with China, its global peer or near peer.

At the time of Nixon’s visit, its architect, Secretary of State, Henry ​Kissinger’s goal was to exploit the Sino-Soviet split. By improving relations with Beijing, he intended to pressure the Soviet Union with a possible U.S.-China alliance. He anticipated that the fear of being isolated would force Moscow to be more cooperative on arms control and European security. By making the U.S. closer to........

© Eurasia Review