How Xi Jinping Blew It
Like Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler or George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Chinese President Xi Jinping has just had an epic foreign-policy failure—he just doesn’t appear to have realized it yet.
Through four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Xi had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to significantly, and perhaps permanently, expand Chinese influence around the world at America’s expense. By angering friend and foe alike, withdrawing from global institutions and agreements, and failing to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, Trump left the world ripe for a new leader to step into Washington’s worn shoes. Some were convinced this was China’s moment. “Sadly, the art of diplomacy has been lost in Washington D.C.,” the former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani wrote earlier this year. “This has created a massive opening that China has taken full advantage of, on its way to victory over the post COVID-19 world.”
But Xi blew it. A recent revealed that attitudes toward China have drastically darkened in a number of countries, sinking
