Such is the final symbolic act of the American state visit to Beijing (13-15 May 2026). Nothing gifted by the Chinese diplomatic counterparts was allowed on board Air Force One. The measure of mistrust just cannot be higher. The ostentatiousness of the act boggles the mind. The symbolic failure of the gesture cannot be overestimated.

Gifts may be poisonous. No doubt about that. Think about the cell phones that Palestinian leaders purchased, the cell phones that were tampered with by the Israeli secret services, the cell phones that were detonated, killing or maiming the users of those cell phones.

Think about the notorious infected blankets that the European conquerors of North America presented to the Indians. The purpose was to do away with the indigenous peoples in a surreptitious and efficient way. Or, for that matter, think about the alcohol generously sold to the same Indians for the purpose of weakening their health and paralysing their will.

Why, think about China itself, about the opium that was forcibly sold to the Chinese in the 19th century. Two protracted wars were waged over the right of the Europeans to bless the indigenous people with this good!

Think about the Trojan Horse. Legend or no legend, the principle was known and well established in antiquity. Gifts may be dangerous, and oftentimes they are.

Hence an interesting development of the meaning of the German word Gift, whose initial sense overlapped with that of the English word gift, but with time came to denote… poison!

Think about drug dealers who gift or give freely the first few doses of a drug to hook the person on the substance, to make him addictive.

Also the English language has an expression showcasing the troublesomeness of receiving gifts. The expression is to receive a white elephant, i.e. to get a gift that costs a lot to maintain but provides no usefulness (white elephants were considered sacred, hence one could not use them for any kind of work, but one, obviously, needed to feed them).

So, who knows, the Chinese may have concealed spying malware or whatever malicious things in their gifts, down to biological material. The American delegation acted verbatim on the old maxim: Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, which in our context would be: Timeo Sinae et dona ferentes, meaning: I fear the Chinese, even those bearing gifts (The Aeneid, Book II).

How should that act on the part of the American delegation be construed? A message of mistrust of the Chinese? Real, palpable fear of being threatened by Chinese technology? How was that gesture perceived by the managers of the Middle Kingdom?

Almost a century back the Chinese were American allies in Washington’s fight against Japan. After the war came a split: Americans backed Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of China’s nationalists, against Mao Zedong, the leader of China’s communists. Chiang Kai-shek lost to the communists and found refuge on the island of Taiwan. Americans recognized Taiwan as ‘China’ and tried to ignore mainland China in the hope of reversing the historical process. Nothing came out of it. Communist China, poor and backward as it was, showed no signs of disintegration, so much so as it was backed by the Soviet Union. But then the fate smiled at Americans: Nikita Khrushchev, the USSR’s leader, fell out with Mao Zedong, which later even culminated in border skirmishes. That was something that Americans had been waiting for. Washington reversed its political course and did its best to win Beijing over to its side against Moscow. Americans withdrew recognition for Taiwan and recognized mainland China as… China proper. Much later came the years of economic cooperation in that American businesses were for a large part outsourced to China. The fall of the Soviet Union – history’s another gift for the United States – seemed to seal the fate of the globe: the United States emerged as the only dominant power, Russia – the Soviet Union’s political heir – was assigned the role of the provider of resources, while the Middle Kingdom was supposed to happily accept the role of the world’s manufacturer.

Things may have stayed that way till this day but for America’s greed and arrogance. Gradual military encirclement of Russia in terms of expanding NATO and engineering unrest in the post-Soviet area (Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan) along with a simultaneous political assault against China as America’s most dangerous political and economic rival pushed Moscow and Beijing in their mutual embraces. Khrushchev’s political mistake has been corrected: Moscow and Beijing have begun to cooperate against the West, against the United States, though openly no such declaration has been issued.

The political sine wave for the United States could be traced something like this: from friendly China (Chiang Kai-shek) to unfriendly China (Mao Zedong), to friendly China again (Prime Minister Zhou Enlai), and again to a rather unfriendly China (Xi Jinping). The discarded gifts and the rejected devices merely illustrate the current state of affairs. 

In recent decades, the US strategy towards China has been based on economic opening towards the Middle Kingdom, which was particularly evident in the outsourcing of American manufacturing there. This was made possible by the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, who facilitated and advocated this opening. The subsequent leaders of the People’s Republic of China (Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao) zealously fulfilled Deng’s legacy, although the current leader, Xi Jinping, has violated one of his predecessor’s most important teachings: the famous 24 character-mantra. Deng’s testament read as follows: Observe coolly and calmly, secure your positions. Gain trust, conceal your capabilities, bide your time without stepping out of line, do not raise your head if you wish to retain your leadership.

Xi broke ranks: he flooded the West with cheap goods of ever-improving quality, sold US Treasury bonds, hoarded gold, built artificial islands for his bases in foreign waters in the South China Sea, expanded his fleet, developed hypersonic missiles, landed on the moon, helped the Serbs, Iranians, Russians, won over half of Africa, and built the world’s longest bridges, dams and cities. A colossal emperor!

Meanwhile, the US empire survived only thanks to innovation and increased productivity. That is not enough. The Americans know this and, in response to China’s abandonment of Deng’s policies, have sent Emperor Trump to the front line. The guns are now thundering against Beijing’s allies; tariffs and sanctions are being imposed. But… if this continues, it could well end in a kinetic, direct conflict between the US and China.

Many political scientists see parallels here with the so-called Thucydides Trap. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote a famous work, The History of the Peloponnesian War, which describes the conflict between the two greatest city-states. The aforementioned “trap” suggests that ancient Sparta, seeing its position in Hellas under threat, sought an escalation with Athens, which claimed the role of hegemon. At that time, the Greek world was bipolar, which threatened to escalate. This occurred in 431 BC. According to Thucydides, this war was inevitable precisely because one of the city-states wanted to retain the status of hegemon and the other wanted to attain that status. However, the war ended with both the Spartans and the Athenians losing their influence.

The historian Graham T. Allison has expanded on the concept of Thucydides’ Trap and, in his study, described 16 examples of it, 12 of which ended in war, e.g.:

[1] Late 17th to mid-18th century – Kingdom of France vs. Kingdom of Great Britain – war

[2] Mid-19th century – France vs. German Empire – war

[3] Mid-20th century – United States vs. Empire of Japan – war

Allison’s concept has been criticised by many political scientists, such as Hal Brands and Michael Beckley. They argued that in many of the cases identified by Allison as the Thucydides Trap, it was not the impending overtaking of an old hegemonic power that triggered the war, but rather the rising power struck first when its rapid rise turned into stagnation.

At present, however, we are seeing that the Chinese economy may be stagnating in the face of the new oil crisis and tariffs.