From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story.

I'm Manvina.

When the war with Iran first broke out, there were all sorts of claims about Washington's complex strategy and who they were really targeting.

Donald Trump is playing four-dimensional chess with this Iran war.

Obviously the first part is to stop the Iranian nuclear threat.

But it's also about China.

It's about cutting off the Chinese energy supply.

To the extent that President Trump can take the Iran regime

out of the hands of the Chinese communists,

you weaken China, you increase America's standing in the world.

Seven weeks later, with a strait of Hormuz still blocked, the global economy under threat,

and a fragile ceasefire teetering on the brink, it seems that plan may have backfired.

China benefits because this means America is not only focused less

on the Asian military environment,

but also because the United States is seen as so much less reliable by its own allies.

Its leaders like to say these days that it's China that is the stable and predictable world power.

I think the tagline for Beijing's strategy is we don't need to win the war.

We only need to win from it.

With an erratic White House burning bridges with its allies, America's military under strain and the bounds of international law already broken.

Will China emerge as the real winner from this war? And what will it mean for the future of Taiwan? The story today is China winning the Iran War.

I got to China at the beginning of March when the war had just started, so it was very much top of mind for people because everyone was trying to grapple with

what has just happened, what does this mean basically like in the rest of the world.

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