Seventy can be a dangerous age, sometimes

When you hit threescore years and 10, as I have just done, several things happen. Young people stand up on the Underground subway and offer you their seats, girls smile at you and, here at China Daily, much attention is paid to the grey hairs and the perceived wisdom that goes with it.

No, I'm not complaining.

One luxury it does afford is the opportunity for a little self-reflection. So here goes, with apologies if I ramble.

I've been lucky enough - or privileged, as my dear late friend and colleague Clare Tomlinson would put it - to have had a first-class seat as a journalist in some of the most momentous events of the past 50 plus years.

Did I really walk nervously down a dark country lane in "bandit territory" in Nothern Ireland, looking for the farmhouse which had offered me a room for the night in 1971?

Was that really me riding a motorcycle down the Bien Hoa highway to Saigon long after curfew in 1972?

Did I really endure Khmer Rouge shelling of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in 1973?

I was lucky enough to live in Singapore just after it broke away from Malaysia, and witness the sudden explosion of a city state determined to succeed.

I had five happy years in Hong Kong, a city dedicated to making money, and was able to watch from afar as Chinese mainland struggled out of its chrysalis, on the way to becoming the world giant it is today.

When I was a kid, one of the urban myths that abounded was that if 1 billion Chinese suddenly decided to jump up and down on the spot, the earth would move.

Well, in a way, they did, and the earth became a much better place.

As an interested student of world politics, I have watched the succession of presidents that have come to power in the United States - I recall the election of Eisenhower, my fears of nuclear Armageddon if Republican Senator and presidential hopeful Barry Goldwater ever got his finger on the nuclear trigger, John Kennedy's brief but significant tenure of the White House, the social welfare plans of Lyndon Baines Johnson cast to dust because of the wasteful and tragic actions of the US in Vietnam, and then Nixon.

Richard Milhous Nixon just looked dodgy, and it came as no surprise that Watergate proved his nemesis. Perhaps his one triumph was the groundbreaking trip to Beijing which helped contribute to establishing China in the eyes of the West as a world-class player.

In the UK, I was very much part of the tumultuous years of Margaret Thatcher's revolution, including the Falklands War.

So why, in what might politely be called the third age of my journalism career, am I seized with a deep sense of fear and misgiving - not just as a newsman, but as a human resident of this planet?

In a word, Trump.

I am still flailing around, trying to figure out how a sophisticated, democratic country such as the US could elect a man regarded by many as an egocentric, self-opinionated person, without much political skill or experience of running anything except a group of companies bearing his name.

The answer, of course, is in part because the US democratic system has become completely degraded, allowing an outsider like Trump and his dubious backers to take control.

Already, barely a month into his presidency, Trump's habit of late-night tweeting and spraying executive orders around without apparently consulting the various departments involved are like the equivalent of fishing using hand grenades.

World leaders, and I am sure China is amongst them, are figuring out how to handle a man who doesn't follow diplomatic norms.

It can be dangerous and it affects all of us.

I may just dig out my tin hat and flak jacket.

Chris Peterson is Managing Editor, Europe, for China Daily. Contact him on chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com