As the US is rejecting globalization, China is stepping up to help save it.

For its first two decades the PRC was anathema to the U.S. Not until Mao’s death in 1976 could one imagine normal relations between the two nations. Today the Chinese people have opportunities and freedoms once unimaginable. U.S. policy should focus on the long-term, encouraging coming generations in China to take control of their future.

The key to which country currently takes the lead in the global tussle in AI and other technological forefronts can be boiled down to some fundamentals, while China is pushing the boundaries in this Sputnik Moment, it still lags behind the U.S. in this global tussle.

China has invested billions of dollars to increase its soft power, but it has recently suffered a backlash in democratic countries. A new report by the National Endowment for Democracy argues that we need to re-think soft power, because “the conceptual vocabulary that has been used since the Cold War’s end no longer seems adequate to the contemporary situation.”

This buzz surrounding this year’s World Internet Conference (WIC) has been about the first-time attendance of Apple’s and Google’s CEOs, distracting critics from an equally interesting issue: what do countries that send both tech industry and government representatives gain in the long term from participating in these meetings?

China should start building a community with a shared future for mankind from the Asia Pacific.

Beijing has the power to do most anything that it wants not only in the mainland but also Hong Kong (and Macau). However, prudence counsels for less rather than more.

This is what China’s developmental path for the next 30 years will look like.

Few outside China know much about the Chinese canon, a canon that is as rich and valuable as its Western counterpart, that has been revered and reviled at different points in Chinese history, and which may be the key to consolidating the Chinese Communist Party’s authority – or destroying it.

The future and history of the world is being shaped increasingly by China and America. Going forward, all major global issues will intersect at the corner of Washington D.C. and Beijing. How our current leaders and future generations manage this relationship will not only impact the people of China and America; but all of humanity. As 2017 comes to an end and a new year begins, we will see how the Chinese leaders and millennials are poised to re-shape their — and our — world.