Beijing's Message to America: We're an Equal Now --- Xi Jinping is confronting Biden administration with a new world view

"It quickly became obvious in Anchorage, Alaska, last month that Chinese President Xi Jinping's diplomatic envoys hadn't come carrying olive branches. Instead they brought a new world view.

As Biden administration officials expected in their first meeting with Chinese counterparts, Yang Jiechi, Mr. Xi's top foreign-policy aide, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi asked them to roll back Trump-era policies targeting China. Beijing wanted to restore the kind of recurring "dialogue" Washington sees as a waste of time, say U.S. and Chinese officials briefed on the Alaska meeting.

Mr. Yang also delivered a surprise: a 16-minute lecture about America's racial problems and democratic failings. The objective, say Chinese officials, was to make clear that Beijing sees itself as an equal of the U.S. He also warned Washington against challenging China over a mission Beijing views as sacred -- the eventual reunification with Taiwan.

That is a big shift for Chinese leaders, who for decades took care not to challenge the U.S. as the world's leader and followed the dictum Deng Xiaoping set decades ago: "Keep a low profile and bide your time." Some senior Chinese officials privately -- often sarcastically -- called the U.S. Lao Da, or Big Boss.

Now Mr. Xi is reshaping the relationship. As far as he is concerned, China's time has arrived.

"China can already look at the world on an equal level," he told the annual legislative sessions in Beijing in early March, a remark widely interpreted in Chinese media as a declaration that China no longer looks up to the U.S.

The U.S. routinely describes China as a strategic rival, but Beijing has rarely if ever used such terms, emphasizing terms like "win-win" and cooperation.

"One of the more obvious changes in China's attitude is that China now recognizes the existence of competition, which was never expressed in the past," says Wang Huiyao, an adviser to China's State Council and president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank.

The increasingly contentious relationship has created competition for allies, with American diplomats jetting to Japan, South Korea and Western Europe, while Chinese equivalents sew up deals in Southeast Asia, Russia and Iran." [1]

1.Beijing's Message to America: We're an Equal Now --- Xi Jinping is confronting Biden administration with a new world view
Wei, Lingling; Davis, Bob. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]13 Apr 2021: A.1.