This is a long, but very good, article about China, Xi, and the West’s evolving attitude toward them.
Donald Trump’s anti-China message may have been characteristically erratic – with his allegations of unfair trade practices tempered by his open admiration of Mr Xi’s strongman-style – but he used it to rally a disaffected blue-collar base with great effect.
In short, he claimed that trade and engagement had been a bad bet with little to show for it, other than outsourced jobs and technology.
His opponents criticised his counter-productive methods and what they saw as his xenophobic language, but the mould had been broken.
President Biden has walked back few, if any, of Mr Trump’s policies on China, including the trade war he launched. The tariffs have stayed.
Washington has come to belatedly realise that, far from speeding up political reform in China, trade and technology transfer has been used instead to bolster Beijing’s authoritarian model.
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