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President Trump’s visit shows how the United States and China are vying for influence in Asia over trade, technology and the fate of Taiwan.
Oct. 25, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
When Air Force One lands on Sunday in Malaysia, President Trump will begin a tour that will bring him face to face with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as a region that has been increasingly reshaped by the competition between Beijing and Washington.
In this new kind of superpower rivalry, he and Mr. Xi are offering contrasting visions for how the world should be ordered, with consequences for chip factories in South Korea, factory floors in Vietnam, the contested waters of the South China Sea and the status of the self-governed island of Taiwan.
Unlike the Cold War, the battlegrounds for power and influence are centered not only on troops and warships, but also on supply chains, ports and data centers. Governments across Asia are increasingly being pressured to pick sides. Countries caught in the middle, like Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia, must weigh how to benefit from the competition without being held hostage to it.
“Countries in the region don’t want to be seen as just pawns that the U.S. and P.R.C. can pass over as the two cut deals above their heads,” said Ja Ian Chong, a professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China.
“They want agency and would much rather have Washington and Beijing woo them so that they can play both powers off one another,” he added.
That might have been easier in the past when the United States was more engaged with Asia. When an American president visited, it would often be a way to reassure the United States’ friends in the region that Washington had their backs when it came to an increasingly assertive China.
