THE DIPLOMAD ON CHINA, then and now.

Some ten years ago, I wrote about the-then common belief among the Great Thinkers that the 21st century would "belong" to China much as the 20th had "belonged" to the USA.

I had doubts about that, and concluded that the 21st century would only belong to China to the degree that we gave it away. I saw neither then nor now anything intrinsically great about the thuggish CCP that would make their China into a world leader. The PRC was and is a brutish authoritarian state, albeit with large foreign currency reserves; it does not invent, or innovate in any field in particular. China's advancement such as it is, has been obtained largely by espionage, theft, purchase, bribery, and bullying of the first degree, combined with an astute understanding of the greed and the lack of patriotism of large Western corporations.

Well, have we "given away" the 21st century to China?

I don't know whether we have or not, but I do think it's clear that the Biden administration is trying.