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Transnational Thursdays 25

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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If Biden gives Xi Jinping anything, I will consider him a total failure as a president. The rise in hostile actions from China came entirely during Xi's regime, and they came amid reassurances that they wouldn't happen.

He is crawling back now because China is in a position of weakness, but things will go back to the way they were the moment he feels confident.

To be clear the crawling back thing was a facetious joke about the video of Newsom knocking down that kid; visitng tech leaders during an international conference of Asian countries seems like normal business. I'd be pretty surprised if anything super concrete came of any particular meetings, but hopefully having some normal diplomatic interface will keep our countries farther from conflict.

I didn't take your comment as serious, but I very much think that Xi is coming from a position of weakness hoping to get Biden to back off with some vague promises. China has enough systemic economic problems right now without the US making things significantly harder.