Trump's Tiger-Riding Predicament | Digest: March 2026

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Today’s digest is published in collaboration with Bill Bishop’s Sinocism, the China newsletter many of us read before reading anything else.The war in Iran predictably dominates commentary in March.We covered initial reactions to the US-Israeli strikes in our briefing earlier last month, where we noted that assessments of China’s risk-opportunity balance hinged largely on Trump’s ability to turn action into success. We also featured a censored piece from the Intellisia Institute that pushed this logic further, arguing that a prolonged Middle East war could become a major strategic opportunity for China.More than a month on, early scepticism about US regime-change prospects in Iran has hardened into a feeling somewhere between consternation and schadenfreude, with most analysts now framing the situation as a quagmire. The dominant motif is Trump’s “tiger-riding predicament” [骑虎难下]—meaning that it is easier to climb on a tiger than to dismount and easier to start a war than to end one.Which makes it refreshing to read SISU professor Shi Zhan and former Brookings “returnee scholar” Li Cheng urging caution on US failure narratives and dismissing comparisons to the post-9/11 strategic distraction from China. On the more familiar hawkish side we have Wang Jiangyu, who calls this “the last war America can launch with any semblance of dignity”.Meanwhile, Di Dongsheng argues that high energy prices are a net gain for China—a case he was apparently unable or unwilling to make on his WeChat blog on the same theme a few days earlier, which promised but conspicuously withheld the argume…