Episode 1

Donald Trump comes to office in 2017 and upends America’s relationship with Beijing. Top insiders describe what happened when the US president set out to deliver on his promise to ‘make China pay.’

Chinese President Xi Jinping rebrands his communist country as a defender of global free trade and cultivates ties with the rest of the world. He also tries to court the new US president but is unable to stop Trump from embarking on a trade war.

Interviewees include US national security advisers HR McMaster and John Bolton, speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, British chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond, and Chinese experts in foreign policy Lanxin Xiang and Wang Huiyao.