Last week’s melodrama made it plainer than ever that Trump does not understand America – what made it, what it is now, what it stands for around the globe. He just doesn’t get it. His mental and emotional landscape is painfully limited, walled in, barren, scared, and perpetually angry. His whole world is himself alone. Fake patriot Trump is a man without a country. It’s a fair bet the country will ultimately decide it can do without Trump.
What has certainly been left astern is Deng’s advice that China should “keep a low profile” or “bide its time” — tao guang yang hui — as its power and influence grows. The use of this phrase has been variously interpreted over the years as either a warning from Deng that China should avoid throwing its weight around or a ruse in which Beijing stealthily accumulates power without making it too obvious. Under Xi’s brand of Chinese nationalism, the approach has been discarded. This may have been inevitable as China becomes more powerful, but it is at least debatable whether a shrewd Deng Xiaoping would have countenanced an approach that risked antagonising much of the rest of the world.
Source: How Deng Xiaoping set China on a path to rule the world – ABC News
As he spoke from the sunny steps of the U.S. Capitol during his inauguration, Joe Biden acknowledged that this will be “a time of testing.” He enumerated the crises we face—“an attack on democracy and on truth, a raging virus, growing inequality, the sting of systemic racism, a climate in crisis, America’s role in the world.” He vowed to “repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.”
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