Shanghai | When ANZ's Hong Kong-based economist Raymond Yeung travelled around Australia this month meeting with clients, he expected to be talking about China's slowing economy, volatile stock market and the recently announced five-year plan. Instead he was hit with a more surprising line of inquiry.
"I kept being asked what would happen if Donald Trump won," says Yeung. 
ANZ's clients were interested in how a Trump presidency might impact on relations between Canberra and Beijing and affect bilateral trade and investment.
Diplomats based in Beijing are also transfixed by the American election, wondering whether their tenure in the Chinese capital could be turned on its head by Trump's previously-improbable-but-now-increasingly-possible elevation to the Oval Office.
Managing relations with our biggest trading partner and our most important defence ally has always been a delicate balance even without Trump.
But having a US president, who has spent much of his campaign putting China on notice that if he wins "its days of currency manipulation and cheating are over," will make it all that more complicated.
So far Trump's main gripes with China are economic. He has vowed to break down China's "great wall of protectionism", threatened to slap a 45 per cent tax on Chinese imports and labelled Beijing the biggest currency manipulator on the planet.
In this criticism, he is not alone. American politicians across the spectrum often resort to blaming China for all of the country's economic woes and almost every presidential candidate, including Barack Obama, has accused Beijing of manipulating the currency or adopting unfair trade practices.
Trump's foreign policy objectives and his position on the fraught situation in the East and South China Seas have received far less attention but if elected, he could dramatically alter the geopolitical landscape.
His position is confusing. On his website, under the Trump plan to "make America great again" he pledges to strengthen the US military and deploy it appropriately across the region. "A strong military presence will be a clear signal to China and other nations in Asia and around the world that America is back in the global leadership business," he says.
However, in a series of speeches and interviews, Trump has also flagged a retreat from some of the country's most important security alliances in Asia. Last week, he told the Washington Post editorial board South Korea was a "very rich" country and the US was not "reimbursed fairly" for the protection it offered.
"We're constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games - we're reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing," he said, according to a transcript of the interview.
Trump has accused Japan, too, of "free-riding." Pushed by the Washington Post on what he would do if China were to occupy the Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands in the East China Sea, Trump declined to answer because he preferred not to give anything away, to be "unpredictable."
Both contrasting scenarios - a beefed-up US military presence in the region and an abandonment of key security alliances - would create problems for Canberra.
Trump could either pressure Canberra more strongly to side with Washington over Beijing or abandon the region altogether, leaving a power vacuum and giving China an opening to pursue its territorial claims more aggressively.
There is a school of thought that once candidates take office and leave the campaign rallies behind, they listen to their advisers and adopt a more pragmatic foreign policy approach.
Ronald Reagan during his campaign denounced Jimmy Carter's decision for normalising relations with Taiwan and pledged to restore official ties with the self-governed island but he never even reopened the embassy.
Bill Clinton, who came to power just three and a half years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, famously referred to the "butchers of Beijing," but then went on to engage extensively with the leadership and support China's ascension to the World Trade Organisation.
China's policymakers are certainly adopting a relaxed wait-and-see approach.
Premier Li Keqiang said at his once-a-year press conference at the close of the National People's Congress earlier this month the relationship has seen "lots of ups and downs" and "no matter who gets into the White House," it would keep "moving forward."
In the meantime, top Communist Party officials are just enjoying the show. Fist fights at campaign events, accusations of racism and the antics of Trump, who is described as a "clown" by the state-owned Global Times newspaper, bolster their argument against introducing a Western-style democratic system.
Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, says Trump would probably speak more aggressively and act more cautiously than any other US president before him.
"Australia could find itself in an Asia where the US steps back and it hasn't faced that challenge before," says White.