It is helpful to consider China's long-term strategic thinking to understand how the authoritarian regime is pulling off this feat. After a century and a half of humiliations, China is re-emerging on the world stage. President Xi's simplest and broadest international goal is to create prestige, respect and influence for China worthy of its historical legacy. China also seeks to insure the party's continual dominance by signaling the legitimacy, equality and (at times) superiority of its political system vis-à-vis the United States and the West abroad and at home.

China works to project constancy and cooperativeness to accomplish these goals. When the U.S. exited from the Paris Climate accords, it afforded an easy and cheap opportunity for President Xi to present himself as an international statesman. China talks of global partnership and stewardship where the Trump administration publicly extols mercantilist self-interest as the guiding light of U.S. foreign policy. While the U.S. brags of building walls, China reforms its immigration system with little news coverage and no fanfare.

Under this oasis of calm, China quietly, but systematically, expands its influence. For example, China's One Belt, One Road initiative and creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are both investment strategies to open up foreign markets that simultaneously serve as key instruments to increase Chinese diplomatic power (just as the Marshall Plan, the World Bank and the IMF served multiple purposes for the U.S. decades ago).

The irony of current trade frictions is that U.S. complaints about unfair Chines trade, especially regarding intellectual property protections, have obvious merit (something many Chinese observers would also grant). But rather than reach out to other trading partners to form an international coalition to place common pressure on China to alter its policies, the U.S. has been lashing out in all directions with a series of poorly aimed trade threats against China, against Canada and Mexico, against Europe and against allies like Japan and Korea.