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…