As Korean scrambles to build diplomatic links from scratch with a Donald J. Trump administration, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moved swiftly to schedule a summit with the U.S. president-elect in New York next week. While Korean President Park Geun-hye spoke over the phone with Trump for about 10 minutes Thursday to reaffirm his support for the U.S.-Korea alliance, Abe and Trump held a 20-minute phone conversation and agreed to meet on Nov. 17.

Despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric, the US is not in decline. Because of immigration, it is the only major developed country that will not suffer a demographic decline by mid-century; its dependence on energy imports is diminishing rather than rising; it is at the forefront of the major technologies (bio, nano, information) that will shape this century; and its universities dominate the world league tables.

President Rouhani touched upon critical issues of the press and the crackdown targeting the ‘mouths and pens’ based on unfounded evidence; he believed that the media’s foremost responsibility was to promote peace of mind for the public, since “in a society of severe perturbation and tumult, terrorism and extremism would find favorable grounds to be fostered

While U.S. officials are consulting intensely with their South Korean counterparts, not enough attention is being paid to Beijing’s perspective, even though China would figure heavily into any prospective U.S. action toward the North. By examining Beijing’s role in each of the three main North Korea policy strategies under debate in the United States, the “China factor” emerges as a decisive one, in ways that policymakers need to weigh carefully.