john lucas a man from the national university of singapore. uk, this is bbc news. and around back militias. going to be interesting and probably crucial to follow in the coming days, the development of that offensive, to see if assad is able to retaliate against the rebels, and if the rebels actually can lead to another breakthrough, which would mean you have another let's say wave, another round in the conflict. forsure wave, another round in the conflict. for sure it tells us this is nowhere near the end of a conflict in syria.— a conflict in syria. thank you so much _ a conflict in syria. thank you so much for _ a conflict in syria. thank you so much for breaking - a conflict in syria. thank you so much for breaking it - a conflict in syria. thank you| so much for breaking it down a conflict in syria. thank you i so much for breaking it down to us. john lucas a man from the national university of singapore. around the world and across the uk, this is bbc news. three americans detained in china were released in a prisoner swap. their names ar

now talk with joe in chung who is an associate professor of political science at the national university of singapore. welcome to the program. professor charles, let's start with china present intellect. trump says he plans to radically alter us trade policy. do you expect a trade war between the us and china? so if uh, president trump does decide to increase tires on china by the degree that he's suggested, but succeeds set this very high likelihood that the posse would retaliate. but even if we are at some proportion of that 60 percent, not the full 60 percent of we would see a very likely to protect anyway. and that could lead to a truthful and that could lead to a lot of destruction. and of course higher prices for everybody during his 1st term as president trump withdrew the us from the trans pacific partnership. given the growing competition for influence in the, in the pacific region, how like a 2nd, trump administration approach trade deals. and the reason so i don't think that united states is in the books are trade deals. they're not really for market access, regardless of party for that ma

consequential political relationship, we go live to chong jiayin, political scientist at the national university of singapore. thank you so much for joining us. so as we've been saying, biden is set to meet with xi today, but not in the way he'd have hoped with a lame duck duck presidency and the u.s. headed back to isolationist policies under donald trump. so what will both leaders be looking to get out of this meeting so i guess for xi, it's probably more straightforward. >> he's probably wanting to signal not just to the united states but to the world at large that the prc is a force for stability, that they're open for business. this is very similar to what he did in davos in 2017. however, the prc today is very different from that of 2016. they have far more economic headwinds for president biden. i suppose what he would want to do is to cement his legacy and to try to keep us, the u.s. prc relationship, on as much of an even keel as possible. while at the same time hoping that the sort of lattice work that he's been putting in place with the other us allies uh, you know, hoping that will hold up under