China is reportedly conducting a global diplomatic campaign to oppose President Donald Trump’s new trade deals with US allies. According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, Beijing is trying to reframe itself as a global rules-based order defender and make other countries see Washington as an unreliable trading partner.

President Xi Jinping’s diplomats are fanning out across the world with a clear message for countries cutting deals with Donald Trump: The US is a bully that can’t be trusted.

Since China first joined the World Trade Organisation a quarter century ago, it has developed a particularly Darwinian version of capitalism, in which companies must tolerate unending rounds of brutal price competition,