Biden-Xi Summit Won’t Save a Declining Relationship
Cooperation on warming and military ties are fine, but this is the same Chinese leader who said a decade ago: “The ‘laws of the jungle’ of international competition have not changed.”
After you, sir.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images
The People’s Republic of China is a Leninist state run by a party that believes the struggle for power is unceasing and unforgiving. Know that, and you’ll know what yesterday’s meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping does and doesn’t mean.
It does mean that Xi, like Biden, has good tactical reasons for talking. It doesn’t mean that China is any less determined to overtake the US as the country that sets the terms of global order — or that any amount of dialogue can change that fact.