I think what we're seeing is the culmination of a breakdown in the decades old neoliberal political consensus that Chinese nationalism could be gradually dispel

I think what we're seeing is the culmination of a breakdown in the decades old neoliberal political consensus that Chinese nationalism could be gradually dispelled through a policy of opening up Western economies to integration with China's. In practice, at the highest level, the Chinese government has kept the market subservient to nationalist goals, and remains stubbornly autocratic, repressive and hegemonistic. The populist leanings of the Trump administration perhaps may make them more receptive to this argument, because they understand these kind of nationalist and hegemonistic instincts better than neoliberal technocrats, but I think this has been a dawning realisation throughout Western policymakers over the past decade. Even the Obama administration, which was strongly neoliberal, worked hard to isolate China economically through the TPP. Trump's disdain for trade deals killed that, but his confrontation of China is really just a noisier continuation of a pre-existing US foreign policy. Big business might have put a restraint on Western policymakers' wishes to oppose China if they'd had more success in penetrating the Chinese market. But here the Chinese government has been too defensive, and Western business leaders have realised that they simply won't be allowed to be dominate in China in any meaningful way. Meanwhile, they have watched their infrastructure get attacked and their IP stolen, and have decided enough is enough.