chapotraphouse

I read a bit of the on China (archive link to get around paywall) article. Brainworn stew.

But Biden has hit China harder than Trump ever did. Armed with a more determined foreign policy, he has inflicted acute damage on the country’s economy and geopolitical ambitions, from which China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has struggled to recover. “A Biden-led U.S., probably from the Chinese perspective, looks like a more formidable challenge,” Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told me.

The most telling example is Biden’s technology policy. In 2022, his administration effectively barred the export to China of advanced semiconductors and the complex equipment required to manufacture them. The controls will likely set back China’s hopes of building a competitive chip industry for years and hamper its progress in other key tech sectors, such as artificial intelligence.

By comparison, from Beijing’s point of view, haggling with Trump over tariffs or exchanging bombastic rhetoric was a mere nuisance. Trump’s withdrawal from American global leadership encouraged Xi to promote China as a more responsible world power. The chaos of the Trump presidency—the administration’s inept response to the pandemic, the violence of January 6—allowed Chinese propagandists to cast the United States as a superpower in decline.

Apparently the burger reich is no longer an empire in decline under Bidler.

Biden’s diplomatic reengagement has made spreading that narrative harder. In response, Xi has become more hostile to Washington. He has routinely resisted dialogue with the Biden administration and become more determined to upset the U.S.-led world order. He has grown more desperate and isolated as a result. Opposed by most of the world’s major powers, Xi has thrown in his lot with the pariah states Russia and Iran in an attempt to build an anti-American coalition to challenge U.S. primacy.

Pariah states among the international community (tm) perhaps.

Whoever wins the White House, Xi will pursue his agenda to roll back American power and create a China-centric world order. But he would likely push even harder to promote China as a world leader if Trump were in charge. By weakening U.S. standing abroad and democracy at home, Trump would offer Xi more opportunities than Biden to extend Chinese influence and win hearts and minds within the developing world.

China is totally trying to take over the world, and Bidler is totally standing in the way of Chinese diplomacy! Trust me bro!

It ends with this banger:

If Xi could vote in November, he would surely cast his ballot for Trump.