China's military commentator Zhou Bo writes on Financial Times that If China's reform and opening-up since 1979 has succeeded in bringing the country to the centre of the global stage, it has also allowed the US to see whether the communist state would become more "like us" in the course of liberalisation. The results of this experiment have been disappointing from a US point of view. Liberalisation has not changed China as the Americans had hoped. Jim Mattis, the US defence secretary, used the unveiling in January of a new national defence strategy, following the national security strategy published at the end of 2017, to underline American discontent. "Great power competition — not terrorism," he said, "is now the primary focus of US national security"... By viewing its relationship with China as a competition between great powers, the US is making another, far more consequential, misjudgment following its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While economic security is indeed part of national security, an all-out trade war with China will only invite retaliation. And faced with a common threat, China might opt to become closer to Russia...The question today is how the US will behave towards China, now that Mr Trump sees it as a strategic competitor. One American media outlet described the national security strategy as "dead on arrival". But if this is a serious policy document, the whiff of a new cold war, it may well prove to be a watershed in America's irreversible decline.

BBC reports that China's governing Communist Party has proposed removing a clause in the constitution which limits presidencies to two five-year terms. The move would allow the current President Xi Jinping to remain as leader after he is due to step down. There had been widespread speculation that Mr Xi would seek to extend his presidency beyond 2023. Party congress last year saw him cement his status as the most powerful leader since the late Mao Zedong. His ideology was also enshrined in the party's constitution at the congress, and in a break with convention, no obvious successor was unveiled. Born in 1953, Mr Xi is the son of one of the Communist Party's founding fathers. He joined the party in 1974, climbing its ranks before becoming president in 2013.