Chinese President Xi Jinping recently took a phone call from his U.S. counterpart, Joseph Biden — their second since Biden took office. The two leaders had extensive, candid, in-depth dialogue on China-U.S. relations and issues of mutual interest. Although uncertainties remain in bilateral relations, this phone call sent four significant signals.

More legislative documents concerning China have passed through Capitol Hill offices in recent months than ever before, mostly suggesting countering or restrictive policies on China and the Chinese people.

The speed and scope of the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan have prompted introspection in the West over what went wrong, and how, after billions of dollars spent on a 20-year war effort, it could all end so ignominiously. China, though, is looking forward. It is ready to step into the void left by the hasty U.S. retreat to seize a golden opportunity.

Chancellor of the German Reich Otto von Bismarck famously said, “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made”. In this regard, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) looks like the longest sausage ever made. It was negotiated for nine years by around 140 countries, making it the longest-running international law negotiation in history. Understandably, compromises are made and ambiguities that could be flexibly interpreted still found.

Much has been said about the so-called Wolf Warrior diplomacy. Rhetoric aside, the real issue isChinese victimhood over the “century of humiliation” that started with the 1840 opium war.

In late May at an event hosted by Stanford University, U.S. President Joe Biden’s Asia czar Kurt Campbell said the period broadly described as engagement had come to an end. Obviously, the old strategic framework, which lasted four decades after China and the United States established diplomatic relations, is falling apart, while a new one has yet to be developed. Both China and the United States are consequential major powers; thus undoubtedly the state and nature of the bilateral relationship will be influential not only for the two countries but for others as well. It is very likely the coming four years will be a defining moment for the trajectory of the relationship. How China and the United States engage with each other over such specific issues as trade disputes, ideological troubles and military relations, is very important. However, the answers to the following three questions will be critical and ultimately defining:

One year has passed since a deadly brawl between Chinese and Indian troops in the Galwan Valley in the China-Indian border areas, which resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops. The aftermath is still being felt today.

The continuous deterioration of China-U.S. relations in recent years has gone beyond what many people might have anticipated. The American Chamber of Commerce in China’s white paper, 2021 American Business in China, mentioned that most of its members identified “tensions in China-U.S. relations” as their foremost challenge for business operations in China. Indeed, China-U.S. ties are at a crucial moment in history. Owing to the rising strategic mutual suspicion and growing prominence of structural differences, the two sides face an important choice: They can either slide into confrontation and conflict or engage in benign competition.

India and the United States have been part of the chorus chanting about the “free and open Indo-Pacific” in recent years, but they are not birds of a feather flocking together. The decision to challenge India’s EEZ suggests that Washington does not consider millions of square kilometres of water in the Indian Ocean “free and open”.

Multilateralism, as we in China understand it, is about seeking consensus through consultation and manage common affairs through cooperation for shared benefits and win-win results. In this sense, China and Europe share a common interest in upholding multilateralism.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent independency of its former republics could be evaluated differently depending on the perspective, and its causes could be studied through different approaches and analytical frameworks. In this regard, much has been written about the “deep causes” of its breakdown. The author does not intend to dwell on these, rather resorting to the perspective of empirical observation to talk about its shallow causes, that is, the most direct cause of the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The largest question hovering over the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, grouping of the United States, Japan, Australia and India is what exactly it is.