While you have been up to your eyeballs in the gush of breaking news, willful distortions and pathetic panicky lies ever since the historic first-ever arrest of a former American president, the rest of the world has kept right on spinning.
And although you perhaps didn’t notice it, the world outside Trump USA has been quietly making news that may be even more historic. It could change our lives – big-time, for all-time. We may be witnessing the quiet making of yet another, more enduring, New World Order.
It’s not your fault that you missed it. Most of America’s News Deciders apparently think this kind of global news just isn’t exciting enough to become click-bait. So they haven’t made sure you saw it. But let’s just stand back and look at the big picture that is being formed by the latest global events. It is a big picture with just one person at the center of it: No, not Joe Biden. Not Vladimir Putin. And definitely not Donald Trump.
It is China’s President Xi Jinping. Xi is standing at a crossroads – it’s his personal crossroads, yet also our geopolitical crossroads. Xi is ready to take his next, bold step. We can only hope he finally hears and heeds the advice he needs now, more than ever.
Look at Xi at his X-roads -- it’s the global news you may have missed:
Wednesday, in Beijing, Xi was making news one step at a time. He was walking along a grand red carpet, reviewing China’s troops. With him was a most unlikely world figure – the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas.
Xi has been working for some time at showing to the world an all-new China that now wields the sort of global clout that comes with being a leader of the global economy. Xi has moved vigorously into areas where America once was dominant but now has frayed ties. Such as the Middle East, where Biden’s bonds with Saudi Arabia’s royalty and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu are weaker than ever before. Xi has assumed a vital diplomatic role for China in Middle East diplomacy. And he is trying to do much the same in (of all places) the Americas; at least the dictatorships of the Americas.
In December, Xi visited Saudi Arabia, where of course he talked oil. In February, Xi hosted a visit by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi. In March, Xi performed a geopolitical feat that once seemed unthinkable for a Chinese leader – he facilitated secret talks in which the Saudis and Iranians stunned the world by reopening diplomatic relations.
Now this: On Wednesday, China and the United States announced Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet in Beijing Sunday and Monday with top leaders including Xi – the visit Blinken canceled after China sent its infamous spy balloon to float over U.S. nuclear missile sites. On Friday, Xi met with citizen zillionaire Bill Gates, and said: “You are the first American friend to visit me this year.”
All the diplo-politicos and academic experts are of course lowering expectations for the on-again official U.S.-China talks. After all, Xi’s mind has been engaged in its own internal tug-of-war: He has seen that Putin’s Ukraine invasion and war-criminal slaughter of civilians has made him a global pariah – forever. Yet Xi has been making the world wonder if we are witnessing a Putinization of Xi’s China – by taking militarily aggressive acts that trigger concerns that he might attack independently governed Taiwan.
But the U.S.-China talks can produce results that greatly benefit both sides – if Blinken is willing to take a decidedly nontraditional, unique approach. I hope he is bold enough to tell the Chinese that, for once, he wants to play his hand with all the cards face up.
Let Blinken candidly tell Xi this is an unprecedented opportunity to show the world he can be a leader of the global economy – along with the United States. America doesn’t want to be an adversary, but perhaps an economic partner. They can envision a partnership in which collaboration replaces sanctions.
But Blinken needs to emphasize that can never happen unless Xi shows the world that he has learned the lesson Putin just taught the world – the lesson of what NOT to do.
Blinken can suggest that Xi has a unique chance to show the world he can be a 21st century global leader – by forging a new constructive relationship with Taiwan. Let Xi’s China and Taiwan agree to establish a special, collaborative economic relationship. It can only happen if both sides pledge they will never take military action against the other. And mean it. Forever.
That’s the only way the Chinese people in both lands can enjoy a future of peace through prosperity.
