Op-Ed: Xi is positioning China as the world’s indispensable economy
Article summary
A news report on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s New Year’s Eve speech is shown on a public screen in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020. It will leave little doubt that managing relations with China will be both President Joe Biden’s most immediate and most defining foreign policy challenge. […] Most challenging for President Biden is that China has taken a series of pre-emptive steps through trade and investment deals that will complicate his efforts to reinvigorate Asian and European alliances and partnerships. These will be difficult to counter due to his Democratic Party’s reluctance to negotiate new trade arrangements and the detritus of President Trump’s punitive tariffs and sanctions. […] President Biden’s opportunity is that Xi may overplay his hand internationally through bullying and at home through an over-concentration of power.
