In this week’s podcast, SCMP political economy editor Zhou Xin focuses on two major announcements. First, an analysis of this week’s speech by President Xi Jinping, in which he mentioned the Chinese word for “struggle” more than 40 times but failed to mention the United States or President Donald Trump.

Two days after that speech, China announced that a team of negotiators would travel to Washington to restart trade talks that have stalled since a high-level phone call in August. Zhou Xin…

The ongoing trade war between the US and China has been something of a long-distance series of bombshells and responding salvos in policy and rhetoric, but lately has been ratcheted up several degrees of intensity.

In the past week alone, there have some extraordinary new developments - the daily news cycle on trade has now ramped up its pace and volitility - in response, the Political Economy team at the South China Morning Post has decided to launch a weekly digest of what we’ve reported,…