Chinese President Xi Jinping made a trip through Latin America in November, his third in four years. He signed more than 40 deals, Bloomberg reported, and committed tens of billions of dollars of investments in the region, adding to a $250 billion commitment made in 2015.

The centerpiece of China’s strategy takes advantage of Trump’s declaration that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead. The trade deal, negotiated between the United States and 11 other countries, lowered barriers to trade and investment, pushing large Asian economies such as Japan and Vietnam in a more open and rule-based direction. Now China has offered up its own version of the pact, one that excludes the United States and favors China’s more mercantilist approach.

Australia, once a key backer of the TPP, has announced thatmeeting’ at the Goa BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit in October. The prime minister collaborated with his son-cum-personal-secretary Prakash Dahal in publicising what seems to have been an informal and inadvertent meeting with Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi in a lounge as they waited for conveyance.

Unless Washington plans to wage a large-scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish," the state-sanctioned Global Times newspaper wrote on its English-language website.

It went on to stress that the US "has no absolute power to dominate the South China Sea," warning that Tillerson "had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories."

The article also said that China has