One of the most consequential meetings of the year is due to take place next week but you may not have heard much about it.
On the sidelines of an economic summit in South Korea, the two most powerful leaders in the world, President Donald Trump of the United States and President Xi Jinping of China are expected to sit down together for a chat.
It will be the first face-to-face meeting in six years.
Why does it matter?
These two men oversee the world's largest economies, inextricably linked by an annual trade in goods and services to the tune of $650bn.
Only they’ve fallen out over that trade with massive implications for the rest of the world’s economy.
On top of that, these two are also in charge of the world’s largest and most lethal militaries - no small thing to consider as tensions rise, and rise.
In this context, Mr Trump’s renaming of the US Defence Department the 'Department of War' left some observers somewhat discomforted.
The potential military flashpoint in the Sino-US relationship remains the democratic self-ruling island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own and has vowed to take by force if necessary.
Asked whether Taiwan is going to come up in his meeting with Mr Xi, Mr Trump confirmed that it would but downplayed the prospects of a Chinese invasion.
"First of all, the United States is the strongest military power in the world by far," he told reporters at the White House on Monday.
"It's not even close - we have the best equipment, we have the best of everything and nobody's going to mess with that," he said.
It’s a bold claim and one that divides China experts.
The question of which side would come off worse in a military clash between the US and China over Taiwan is very much a live topic of debate among those brave enough to contemplate it.
So, Taiwan will be on the agenda, as will fentanyl, the flow of which into American cities Mr Trump wants to see China do more to rein in.
And there’ll be talk about the other American addiction - TikTok, the Chinese-built and owned social media app.
US Congress wanted to ban its use on national-security grounds. But Donald Trump, crediting the platform - which now boasts around 180 million American users - with helping him get re-elected, stepped in to save it.
A deal to bring TikTok’s US business under American ownership had been in the works for months and seemed to reach agreement in September.
But the details remain unclear - not least whether TikTok’s most valuable asset, its algorithm, will remain under Chinese control.
TikTok has become a crown jewel in China’s soft power projection across the global stage and therefore not something Beijing is likely to relinquish readily.
Underlying all of these talking points is, of course, the ongoing trade war - the main focus of this upcoming tête-à-tête.
Since Donald Trump’s "Liberation Day" in April, when he started a tariff war with trading partners, the most intense battle has been fought with China.
These days in US media, the plight of soybean farmers is being well documented - their profits in the gutter due to the loss of Chinese custom. US price inflation which many Trump voters believed he would bring down, also remains stubbornly high.
Research by Goldman Sachs, a global investment bank, estimated this week that US consumers would eventually absorb 55% of the added levies on imported goods.
Mr Trump won’t want to get the blame for that once the mid-term elections roll around next autumn.
Something of a truce was reached over the summer, as US and Chinese delegations tried to flesh out the framework to a trade deal.
But this month, tensions skyrocketed again after China announced sweeping new export controls on rare earths and magnets, crucial to American - and European - technology, in response to a US expansion of its restrictions on semiconductor chips.
Rare earths are the elements that go into everything from smartphones to MRI scanners to F-35 stealth fighter jets and China dominates global production.
As Donald Trump might say, no other country even comes close.
It hasn’t been lost on American military experts that the United States is entirely dependent on its biggest strategic rival for its most advanced weaponry.
No wonder then that Mr Trump reacted with outrage, threatening an extra 100% tariff on Chinese goods, restrictions of US software exports and calling China’s gambit not only "extraordinarily aggressive" but also a "moral disgrace".
Whether he’ll say that to Mr Xi’s face next week is unlikely because, for all the reasons mentioned above, he does very much want to walk away with a deal.
What does China want?
Unlike his American counterpart, who is famously fond of near-daily freewheeling encounters with the press, every public appearance by the General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party is heavily scripted and choreographed.
The decision-making of the Chinese regime largely takes place behind closed doors, often leaving observers reading tealeaves for clues on the direction of travel.
One such opportunity arose this week, though, with a major meeting of China’s political leadership known as the fourth plenum. This is where the political and economic agenda for the next five years is set, ready to be rubber stamped by the legislature next spring.
A communiqué issued at the end of the four-day huddle was marked with a "party-first, struggle-heavy tone, prioritising the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership above all else," Alexander Davey, analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a Berlin-based think tank told RTÉ News.
Although there was no direct mention of tensions with the US, the communiqué spoke of "high winds, rough waves and raging storms".
Notably, Mr Davey said, the pledge of "putting the people first", was in fact in second place in the readout. In first place was "uphold the party’s overall leadership".
"This signals the Party is in charge and you must follow as we go through this period of struggle," he added.
Front and centre were China’s plans to push ahead with self-reliance in science, technology and innovation, including in green energy (in stark contrast to the US where the White House is promoting coal again).
This all points to the Chinese Communist Party doubling down on its economic policies of more state control at home, which has implications for foreign firms doing business in China as well as strategic supply chain dominance, which Europe and the US are already deeply concerned about.
"Xi seems confident in his continued focus on enhancing China’s and techno-industrial might and manufacturing prowess, even though that path will intensify trade frictions with the US, Europe, and other parts of the globe," said Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.
"It’s a sign that Xi sees the international costs for this policy as manageable," he said.
We also learnt more about a major purge of senior Communist Party officials including nine of the top military brass, indicating a further concentration of power in Mr Xi’s hands.
"The continued purges of members of the Central Committee, and particularly of military high command, are almost operatic," Mr Czin said.
"The conspicuous absence of a number of Central Committee members from the proceedings portends further scouring of the senior ranks of the Communist Party by Xi," he said.
So, what does this all mean for that encounter next week?
Mr Xi will be walking into that meeting having demonstrated "his dominance at home and having laid out a vision for China’s development through the end of the decade," Mr Czin said.
"It will make a jarring juxtaposition with the US government, which may not even be open at that point," he said, adding, "that split screen won’t be lost on third countries participating in the APEC summit".
Mr Trump is convinced his Chinese counterpart wants a deal.
He likes to say that China needs the US more than the other way round.
Indeed, it's no secret that China’s economic growth is slowing, the property market bubble has burst, youth unemployment is rising and the long-promised surge in consumer spending has not materialised. To boot, China’s rapidly ageing population is a demographic timebomb.
But Mr Xi is not really the deal-making type and certainly won’t be striking one spontaneously on the sidelines of a regional summit.
What matters for him, no less than Mr Trump, is the optics. And both sides will want to declare victory, even if the reality doesn’t reflect that.
Another thorny issue likely to come up is China’s support for Russia in its assault on Ukraine. China buys Russian oil and supplies Russia with technology and expertise for the battlefield.
But Mr Trump may not get any joy there either.
In July, it emerged that China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told European Union officials behind closed doors that Beijing did not want to see Russia lose in Ukraine because that would enable the US to shift its entire focus towards China.
One thing we do know is that Mr Trump has considerable admiration for Mr Xi, whom he one described as a "brilliant guy," who controls 1.4 billion people with an "iron fist".
The Chinese leader has, since coming to power in 2012, smothered dissent, purged opponents, brought the media and courts under tight control, jailed Uyghur and other minorities en masse and systematically dismantled democratic rights and institutions in Hong Kong. He also changed the consitution so he could stay in power indefinitely.
Since his re-election, Mr Trump’s admiration for his Chinese counterpart appears to have morphed into emulation, analysts said, citing the president's strengthening of executive power, pursuit of political opponents through the courts, attempts to rein in universities and media, deploying federal security forces to American cities, holding a military parade and of course flirting with the possibility of a thus far unconstitutional third term.
In all of this, Dan Wang, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, sees a "broad cruelty towards people the regime judges to be weak".
"It is the already downtrodden in America and China who feel the brunt of the state’s fury," he wrote in the Economist, "and every crisis is blamed on foreigners or traitors".
But China boasts things like advanced, green infrastructure, orderly cities and manufacturing sovereignty, which, he wrote, have often been achieved with brutish methods.
By contrast, Mr Wang argued, America is getting authoritarianism "without the good stuff".
We get "gilded ballrooms, detention centres and profound stress on the foundations of American institutions," he wrote.
If Mr Xi judges that the United States is becoming more like China politically, it will add to his confidence as he prepares to meet the American president.
After all, imitation is the highest form of flattery - something Mr Trump has grown used to flowing his way.
