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'That China has made a success of its developing world outreach is an often underrated fact in the West. Pew finds that majorities across sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America see Chinese investment positively, and often more positively than US investment. As the Washington-based Brookings Institute wrote last year: “Three quarters of the 1.2b people who live in liberal democracies now hold a negative view of China, but 70% of the 6.3b who live in the rest of the world feel positively toward China.”

These countries are not naive about the costs of Chinese friendship – Pew finds that most cite debt as the most serious problem in their country’s bilateral relations. But what does the US, or the West in general, offer instead?

For Africa at least, “the elites have become ever more frustrated with the kind of aid-defined relationship between western countries and Africa”, Hartley says. “Their viewpoint was that they didn’t want to be patronised any further.”

Trump’s slashing of USAid may be rewriting that particular playbook, but the Maga school of international relations still has few answers for a developing world that wants prosperity through jobs and investment. China has now announced that it will drop its own tariffs on African imports. It’s an easy win – imports from Africa only account for some 4% of total Chinese imports – but the symbolism is obvious.

A few weeks after Trump’s “Liberation Day” in April, Kenya’s President William Ruto visited Beijing. In a speech at Peking University, he expressed sentiments that are probably shared across much of the world: “The postwar multilateral system is broken, dysfunctional and no longer fit for purpose, and the escalating trade tariff war may be its final death blow.”

On that trip, Xi and Ruto pledged to take bilateral ties to a “new level”, including even more expansion of rail and road in Kenya.

Developed countries are less immune to China’s deep pockets, though of course not totally. Their relations with China are much more likely to be underpinned by economic competition, as with the EU; or security concerns, as with Japan and South Korea. These are the countries that are most disillusioned by Trump’s isolationism, but these systemic reasons mean that they would never join the China club.

Instead, Beijing’s strategy here is one of “wedging” – spotting the cracks in the Western alliance, and widening them as much as possible. Even if those countries don’t end up as Chinese allies, distance from Washington can only be a good thing.

Under Trump, conditions are more favourable than they have been in years. Early on, the president’s tariff turbulence and extravagant territorial ambitions immediately secured the electoral victory of two centre-left, struggling incumbent parties. In Canada, Mark Carney was boosted by bullied Canadians rallying around the flag; while in Australia, Anthony Albanese was trailing in the polls until, as Sean Kelly at the Sydney Morning Herald put it, Trump made “Albanese’s boringness quite an appealing commodity”.

Australia is now the poster-child for China’s charm offensive. According to Pew, 53% of Australians prioritise economic ties with China, compared with just 42% who prioritise the US. That makes it one of the countries most amenable to further economic ties with China – akin to South Africa and Kenya.

Earlier this month, a delighted China invited the re-elected Albanese on a six-day trip to Beijing, including a private lunch with Xi Jinping. “China sees him in power for the next three to six years. They’re personally investing in him as a leader who they hope they can pull away from the US a bit,” Richard McGregor, senior fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute, says.