by imposing new trade strictures, threatening China's economic "new normal", this could have severe consequences for China's economic reform agenda and the legitimacy of the regime.

These are all deeply divisive issues within the Chinese Communist Party and will feature prominently at the next leadership conclave, the 19th Party Congress in one year's time.

In all likelihood, Mr Trump will understand that neglecting US pre-eminence in the Asia-Pacific region will have deep economic consequences for the US and may corrode the US alliance network that has served as the bulwark for regional security since the end of World War Two.

He will also be aware of deep bipartisan resentment over the Obama administration's inability to curtail assertive Chinese behaviour in the South China Sea, including the construction of three new airGordon B. Hinckley, an 84-year-old optimist, took the helm of the LDS Church in 1995, when most Americans knew little about it.

During Hinckley’s 13-year presidential tenure, the indefatigable Mormon leader jetted around the globe, energizing the faithful, calling for more temples, tweaking churchwide programs and bringing the Utah-based faith out of obscurity. In his first year, Hinckley scored an interview with the TV newsmagazine “60 Minutes” and won over the show’s skeptical and curmudgeonly reporter Mike Wallace.

Hinckley wanted outsiders to see, as Mormon historian Matthew Bowman says, “a modern, international institution aspiring for cosmopolitanism and normalcy.”

The tireless LDS leader died in January 2008, handing then-80-year-old Thomas S. Monson a church, says Bowman, “fully enmeshed in the American social and cultural disputes of the early 21st century — issues