It is often said China prefers the clarity of Republican foreign policy to the nuance of the Democrats. This is of course an over-simplification. Henry Kissinger records Deng Xiaoping complaining of how he and President Nixon were not hindered by the savage Cultural Revolution from forging relations with China in the early 1970s, yet under George Bush snr the Tiananmen massacre became such an American bone of contention with China. What made the difference was the impetus to seize the strategic moment – in Nixon’s case the opportunity for strategic alignment with Beijing following the Sino-Soviet split. A tough stance against China could bring clarity to the hard strategic contest in Southeast Asia, and in doing so cause China’s peaceful rise to come off the rails