For nine months under President Joe Biden, the U.S. has pursued a diplomatic strategy that could be characterized as about China, without China.
On security, trade, climate and COVID-19, the Biden White House has tried to reorient the focus of the U.S. and its allies toward the strategic challenges posed by a rising China — all while there has been little direct engagement between the two rivals.
The president is now preparing for a pair of global summits where he again won’t be meeting with China’s Xi Jinping but the tensions and aggravations between the world’s two largest economies will nonetheless be on ready display.
Biden heads first to the Group of 20 summit in Rome this weekend after months of still-unresolved negotiations over his proposals to invest billions more in U.S. workers and key industries. He’s promoted those policies by offering them as the solution to a generational threat posed by China and by exhorting the rest of the world to join his cause.
