Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, October 19th. I'm Naila Boone. Here's

what you need to know today. More tension between the Joes, Biden, and Manchin. Plus, remembering

former Secretary of State Colin Powell. But first, today's one big thing. Why China's

hypersonic missile test matters for the U.S. The financial times just broke the story that

China tested a hypersonic missile last August. China says it wasn't a nuclear capable missile,

but a routine spacecraft check. So how worried should we be about this? Here to explain what's

happening and what all of this means for us is Bethany Allen Ebrahimian, Axios' China reporter,

Good Morning Bethany. Hi Naila. Can you explain the context for what we know about what's happening

around this missile test? So this is the latest in a series of pretty significant headlines about

the relationship between China and the rest of the world or the U.S. and China. So a few months

ago, satellite images revealed that there are hundreds of new missile silos in Western China

that have been constructed. We've also seen a dramatic rise in the number of Chinese bombers

and jet fighters that have flown close to Taiwanese airspace. And we've also seen, you know, on the U.S.

side, more alliances and pacts that are being formed with the aim of countering China. So this is

the environment that we're talking about. Some pretty serious tensions here. Bethany, I think

oftentimes when we hear about missile tests, we are used to hearing these come from a place like

North Korea. Is it fair to compare these two countries? How dangerous is this test? Well, these

are quite different things because if you compare China and North Korea, North Korea is very much

a rogue regime. It does not participate in the international system, whereas China is well

situated within the international system. And thus has a lot of reasons and a lot of incentive

to abide by treaties that it has signed to not jeopardize its standing. And something else is that

China has had nuclear weapons for half a century and hasn't used them. So the fact that it's a

...