The Greatest Show on Earth has moved to Asia for the week. After attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ summit in Malaysia, President Trump landed in Japan for meetings with the emperor and prime minister. He will meet President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea and later have his second term’s first face-to-face meeting with China’s leader.
As the summit with Xi Jinping draws near, both sides can point to gains. Mr. Xi has made deft use of his Russian alliance. Propping up Moscow’s war in Ukraine and enlisting North Korea’s productive and military capacity in the war effort, Beijing is weakening both Russia and the West. Even as Vladimir Putin struggles to reassert Russian control in the former western territories of the Soviet Union, Chinese power grows daily across the oil- and resource-rich former Soviet lands in Central Asia.