Advantage China: Trump’s tantrums push US allies closer to Beijing

In the search for stability, some western nations are turning to a country that many in Washington see as an existential threat

If geopolitics relies at least in part on bonhomie between global leaders, China made an unexpected play for Ireland's good graces when the taoiseach visited Beijing this month. Meeting Ireland's leader, Micheal Martin, in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China's president, Xi Jinping, said a favourite book of his as a teenager was The Gadfly, by the Irish author Ethel Voynich, a novel set in the revolutionary fervour of Italy in the 1840s.

It was unusual that we ended up discussing The Gadfly and its impact on both of us but there you are," Martin told reporters in Beijing.