Since U.S. President Donald Trump took office last January, analysts have debated whether he is pursuing a sphere of influence strategy—an approach by which great powers divide the world into privileged blocs, with little concern for the interests or preferences of the smaller states that those blocs subsume. In the affirmative view, the Trump administration is laying claim to the Western Hemisphere—including through military and influence campaigns in Venezuela and Cuba—while leaving China to expand its political, military, and economic influence in Asia. Yet the lavish but substantively modest summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held this week delivered no such arrangement. Trump did not definitively sell out Taiwan or other U.S. Indo-Pacific allies while in Beijing, which was both a relief and an affirming outcome for those who reject the spheres of influence approach.
Both sides of this debate, however, rely on an outdated conception of what it means for great powers to divvy up the globe. In the twenty-first century, spheres of influence can emerge not only as forms of military and geographic dominance, as they did in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also in critical technology or infrastructure domains. Moreover, such spheres need not come about through explicit agreement—they can come about by default. Seen in these terms, a Chinese sphere in Asia is very much still possible. And it becomes even more likely as Trump considers concessions to Xi. For instance, after the summit, when Trump was asked about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, Trump said that he would “make a determination over the next fairly short period,” and later referred to the Taiwan arms deal as a “very good negotiating chip.”
Trump has made such unilateral concessions to Xi before: in December 2025, for example, he cleared the sale of Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips to major Chinese companies, despite national security concerns among many analysts that this would only advantage China’s artificial intelligence development. Continued concessions on U.S. policy in Asia could hasten the arrival of a Chinese sphere in the Pacific, particularly as Washington’s strategic distraction intensifies.
The United States has a great deal to lose if such a sphere emerges, whether by design or by default. On the economic front, Washington’s AI advantages could wane, and China could become emboldened to try to change the status of Taiwan through coercion. And far from creating a pacifying balance of power, such a division could actually raise the risk of a titanic clash between Beijing and Washington in a few years’ time.
A NEW SPHERE
There is ample precedent for great powers divvying up the world. At key moments in history, when the terms of geopolitics were heavily contested, new power balances emerged through negotiation. After the Napoleonic wars, Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia created the Concert of Europe, agreeing to political boundaries designed to maintain a continental equilibrium and thereby prevent war. More than a century later, after the cataclysms of the two world wars, the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States met in Yalta to determine the postwar divisions of Germany and Europe—a model many have invoked when raising the question of whether Trump will attempt some such great-power condominium with Xi, whereby the United States and China give each other a wider berth in their respective regions.
Yet a bargain resembling either of these historical models is neither realistic nor consonant with Trump’s actual foreign policy. Far from retreating to the Western Hemisphere or investing to consolidate the United States’ position there, as A. Wess Mitchell recently advocated in Foreign Affairs, the president started a war with Iran that has metastasized into an open-ended military adventure in the Middle East. In Europe, despite spasmodic diplomacy, Washington has proved unwilling to impose an unfavorable deal on Ukraine or to otherwise grant Russia the inroads it seeks on the continent. Notwithstanding the administration’s strategy documents and professions of prioritization, the president remains engaged around the world, albeit on his own terms, and seems to consider U.S. interests to be truly global in nature. Trump may welcome other powers deferring to the United States in the Western Hemisphere, but he has shown little indication of reciprocal deference. A great-power condominium of the nineteenth- or twentieth-century variety is not in sight.
The real danger is far subtler and perhaps more insidious. Too much of the contemporary debate about spheres of influence relies on a dated understanding of what a sphere entails. The historical model, by which spheres were defined by territorial and military control and were established by great powers’ mutual consent, retains some relevance; Xi would surely welcome a geographic grand bargain that cleaved away Taiwan or U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific and established a zone of Chinese hegemony in East Asia. Yet this vision neglects critically important levers of twenty-first-century influence.
A Chinese sphere in Asia is very much still possible.
If the United States is to retain access to and influence in the most vital regions, strategists must update their understanding of how modern spheres are built and the varied forms they can take. The Soviet bloc during the Cold War, for instance, was a closed sphere of exclusion, in which the dominant power exercised top-down hegemonic control, blunting outside political, economic, and security influence. But modern spheres of influence can also be open. In an open sphere, the great power has considerable influence but remains unable to exclude other states from operating diplomatically, economically, and militarily within its bloc. Although China is nowhere near consolidating a closed sphere in the Indo-Pacific, its rapid accumulation of influence could yield an open sphere in short order—particularly if paired with American distraction and retreat.
Spheres of influence can also be either geographic or functional in nature. In the postwar era, international laws and norms governing state sovereignty have generally disincentivized geographic divisions, in which spheres emerge as territorially defined zones of dominance, achieved through conquest or great-power partitions drawn on a map. Norms against such an approach are weakening, and territorial seizure and military intervention remain means by which great powers can assert control, as demonstrated by Russia’s attempts to dominate its near abroad, Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, and Xi’s possible designs on Taiwan.
Yet contemporary spheres of influence may also manifest in new ways. Powerful states can bend the domestic politics of weaker ones in their favor through AI-enabled disinformation campaigns, cyber-based election interference, or corrupt backroom deals with government officials. Taiwan is subject to more disinformation and cyberattacks than any country on earth, as Beijing tries to bend elite and public perception to its advantage. Foreign-built infrastructure projects, including many of those promised by China’s Belt and Road Initiative, can also compromise weaker states’ political independence, saddling them with untenable debt burdens and forcing them to enact changes to local laws and regulations. And control over digital infrastructure could allow powerful countries to undermine others’ sovereignty by curtailing their access to AI models, cloud services, or telecommunications networks at will—or, more subtly, by wielding inappropriately obtained data, covert or overt censorship, and surveillance as tools of influence.
In today’s world, then, spheres of influence could be still taken by force or granted by great-power collusion. But a partitioned world could also simply coalesce when a powerful state consolidates its influence such that other powers become de facto excluded from key geographies or functional domains.
OWN GOAL
On paper, the outcomes of this week’s Trump-Xi summit appear modest, including claims from the Trump administration about China buying large amounts of U.S. agricultural goods, General Electric engines, and Boeing jets. History, however, may remember this summit differently—as a moment when the balance of power tipped and China truly began consolidating its sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific. This shift has been building for the past year as Trump both kneecapped the United States’ reliability as a defense partner in Asia and allowed China to accelerate its economic, technological, and diplomatic advantages in the region and beyond.
Taiwan is, of course, the linchpin of China’s sphere of influence aspirations. Ultimately, Beijing wants to bring the island under its rule, and it would prefer to do so through coercive pressure rather than a full-scale invasion. Over the past year, Xi has used ongoing U.S.-Chinese diplomacy with Trump to show his influence over Taiwan, including by dissuading U.S. arms sales to the island, encouraging Washington to downgrade critical defense dialogues, and even pushing the United States to revise its stated policy on Taiwan in China’s favor. Xi reiterated this priority right from the start of last week’s summit, stressing to Trump that the two countries “could have clashes or even conflicts” over Taiwan, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry press release. Although Trump did not reverse Taiwan policy outright when in Beijing, he broke precedent by putting the discussion of arms sales on the table; he has made clear that he is reconsidering future sales to Taiwan and questioned the longstanding policy on which they are based. Any action toward curtailing U.S. security assistance in this regard would be catastrophic for Taipei, which depends on American weapons for its defense against China’s formidable People’s Liberation Army. Taiwan is also critical to the global economy, as well as to the United States’ advantages in semiconductors and AI. Yet Trump said that he “didn’t make a comment” in response to Xi’s warnings about the island but “heard him out.”
The United States has a great deal to lose if a Chinese sphere in Asia emerges.
Even the perception that the United States is rethinking its relationship with Taiwan at China’s urging will lead allies to fear that Washington has ceded its Taiwan policy to Beijing. This, in turn, may demoralize the populace in Taiwan, since Taipei relies on U.S. support as part of its strategy to deter Chinese aggression. More Beijing-friendly politicians could then come to power, further pushing Taiwan into China’s sphere. Any concessions will also spook U.S. treaty allies in the first island chain, most notably Japan, whose territory lies just 100 miles from Taiwan and which would rather not be forced to live right next to a Chinese-dominated island. Should Congress fail to stand firm on U.S. support for Taiwan, or should Trump make other Taiwan-related concessions in future meetings with Xi, the perception of the United States as the security guarantor of the Indo-Pacific will begin to unravel.
These political dynamics are accentuated by the reality that the United States has not prioritized the military capabilities that would be necessary to defend Taiwan in the event of Chinese aggression against the island. Even before the war with Iran, the U.S. industrial base was under duress, and in the nearly three months since the war began, the United States has expended vast stores of the very munitions and interceptors needed for defense and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Washington’s closest Asian allies have watched their dedicated assets, including THAAD missile defenses from South Korea and marines from Okinawa, scatter to the Gulf. It is unclear if they will return.
Aside from Taiwan, the second Trump administration’s policies have created space for China to consolidate influence in critical functional domains across the Indo-Pacific. Trump’s announcement of wide-ranging high tariffs in April 2025 threw Asian economies into turmoil and gifted Beijing the chance to portray itself as the region’s most reliable trading giant. The administration’s gleeful razing of USAID also left China as a leading provider of development aid and infrastructure spending for Southeast Asian and Pacific Island countries. Polls, such as those by the Singaporean Yusof Ishak Institute and the Japanese Foreign Ministry, show China’s growing favorability in Southeast Asia. In a poll from Japan’s Foreign Ministry, 65 percent of respondents in Indonesia, 63 percent of respondents in Singapore, and 60 percent of respondents in Malaysia viewed China as an important partner to their country in the future.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s decision to pause all new export controls related to advanced semiconductors and AI, and to allow Nvidia to sell more advanced chips to leading Chinese companies, is boosting Beijing’s ability to invest in and deploy technology in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. China has rolled out data centers in Southeast Asia, surging its ability to embed Chinese AI-enabled technologies into new markets and handicapping the United States’ hard-won lead in the sector. Moreover, as energy prices surge around the world because of Trump’s war in Iran, Chinese sales of electric vehicles and solar panels are hitting record highs, further bolstering China’s dominance in the energy sources of the future.
WRITING ON THE WALL
Despite Beijing’s expanding footholds, it is unlikely that China will achieve a closed regional sphere of influence that locks the United States out of the Indo-Pacific. U.S. allies such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea will grow nervous if Washington continues to warm to Beijing, but they will avoid fully bandwagoning with China, which poses real security and economic threats to their interests. China is also unlikely to find the will or capability to close off large swaths of the global commons to the United States, such as by blocking U.S. navigation in the South China Sea.
But many of Washington’s Southeast Asian partners—especially Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam, which have started tilting toward Beijing—may increasingly welcome expanded trade ties, infrastructure investments, development aid, and energy and chip supplies from China, thus allowing Beijing to consolidate its control of twenty-first-century infrastructure across the region. Chinese dominance in these areas won’t prevent U.S. partnership, but it would pose enduring security problems for the United States if Washington could not offer its own technology or infrastructure systems for fear that they would be compromised by Beijing. And, over time, the systematic loss of U.S. influence in South and Southeast Asia, which lead global growth in demographics, education, and literacy, would be to the United States’ economic and political disadvantage.
The Trump administration does not appear postured to intentionally grant Beijing this sphere of influence, but the risk of China nevertheless consolidating one is becoming all too real. The administration is correct to observe that that the United States no longer possesses global primacy nor the ability to dominate every region of the world. It is also right to recognize that deft management of the U.S.-Chinese relationship requires careful diplomacy, including at the highest level. But in a world of spheres of influence—whether brought about by erratic U.S. foreign policy, Chinese opportunism, or some combination of the two—Washington has the most to lose.
The United States has spent decades working to establish and expand its privileged economic, political, and military position. The persistence of these advantages relies on a relatively open world in which the United States can continue to amass and expend its influence, even if not always with its partners’ full backing. If the United States’ networks of influence become co-opted by an encroaching Chinese sphere, however, that influence will become heavily degraded. Cumulative U.S. global power would remain mighty, but Washington would find itself with diminished ability to shape global outcomes, particularly in Asia.
Moreover, far from creating a pacifying balance of power between Washington and Beijing, a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia would make catastrophic crisis or conflict much more likely. Although Trump may treat small concessions on Taiwan as gestures aimed to stabilize the bilateral U.S.-Chinese relationship, Beijing may come to see those concessions—combined with U.S. distraction and military depletion—as an opportunity. If Trump ceased arms sales to Taiwan, for instance, China might be more emboldened to ramp up its coercion against the island, which would threaten the chips upon which the United States’ semiconductor, AI, and other key industries depended. If Congress, a future president, or even Trump himself then decided to reverse course to protect a critical partner, Washington would face the harrowing choice between coping with China’s chokehold over Taiwan and the global economy or fighting its way back into a sphere Beijing believes it has been bestowed.
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