Valdai Club

On February 24, 2026, US President Donald Trump strode into a divided House of Representatives chamber and delivered a record-setting 108-minute State of the Union, declaring a “Golden Age of America” while pitching tariffs, border enforcement, and a parade of made-for-TV moments. It was Trump 2.0 in miniature: volatility as performance, uncertainty as leverage, and foreign strategy reduced to slogans—China, in particular, scarcely featured, writes Hao Nan. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.

This report is the fruit of an intellectual collaboration among a group of young authors from Russia and China, brought together by their shared participation in the Valdai Discussion Club—Next Generation programme in 2024–2025. It seeks to offer the most comprehensive picture of artificial intelligence (AI) as a contemporary international phenomenon—simultaneously pervasive and yet not fully understood.

In 2026, Central Asia will look more crowded—and more autonomous—at the same time. That is the paradox outsiders should sit with, writes Hao Nan. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.

Japan is quietly testing a big bet in Africa: that it can lead the “rules-based” wiring of the Indo-Pacific without asking African governments to choose between China and the West. Tokyo’s emerging strategy rests on a paradoxical combination: leadership through standards, compromise in practice. Under “America First 2.0” and India’s renewed hedging, Japan is positioning itself as the convenor of debt-sensitive, interoperability-focused connectivity in Africa, yet the density of Chinese projects on the ground will push it toward reluctant, partial cooperation with Chinese-linked assets rather than a clean decoupling, writes Hao Nan.

China’s Global AI Governance Action Plan along with an initiative to launch a World AI Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai, China, casts AI as a global public good, promising capacity building, shared standards, and infrastructure for the developing world.

Lee’s Tokyo swing is best understood as a calibrated use of timing and leverage: an effort to align with Japan sufficiently to present a coherent posture amid a Trump-era mix of tariff brinkmanship, firm industrial bargaining, and heightened defence-spending demands, Hao Nan writes.