China

Axios - President Trump has set a radical new course in the U.S.-China rivalry, ceding ground to Beijing in pursuit of a far narrower vision of America's role in the world... Six months into office, the Trump administration has hollowed out the machinery of American soft power and retreated from key arenas where the U.S. has sought to blunt China's rise.

Some of it is strategic: an "America First" rejection of the institutions and norms Trump officials view as bloated, failed or captured by a liberal foreign policy establishment.  But some of it, critics warn, is shortsighted — focused more on scoring domestic political points than sustaining the long-term foundations of American exceptionalism.

Voice of America — the U.S.-funded broadcaster long trusted to reach audiences inside authoritarian regimes — has gone dark in key regions after the Trump administration gutted its parent agency.

• Chinese state media is moving aggressively to fill the vacuum, expanding broadcasts in Nigeria, Thailand, Indonesia and other countries where VOA once saturated the airwaves, The Wall Street Journal reports....

 A new Pew Research poll of 25 countries found that China — not the U.S. — is now viewed as the world's leading economic power.  China's favorability in most countries polled by Pew has ticked upward, while America's global favorability has diminished significantly since Trump took office.  More