[Salon] The real question therefore isn't 'What does Xi want?', it is whether the U.S. can come to terms with it.

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1860251354108953020

Contrary to this Economist article (https://economist.com/china/2024/11/21/helping-americas-hawks-get-inside-the-head-of-xi-jinping…) that is very heavy in "inscrutable Oriental" tropes, I actually think that Xi is one of the easiest Chinese leaders to read. I think at heart the issue isn't so much that "America’s hawks" cannot "get inside the head of Xi Jinping" as the article's title says, it's simply that they really don't like what they're seeing. In fact, as the article itself acknowledges, Xi has expressed his thinking in an order of magnitude more literature than any other Chinese leaders. He's literally taken the time to explain what he's thinking about most issues in minute details. When he talks about a 'community of shared future for mankind' and an end of the "Cold War mentality and camp confrontation model" he's not being cryptic - he's explicitly calling for an end to U.S. hegemony towards a multipolar world order where different political systems can coexist as equals and where Western values stop being seen as universal. This isn't hidden between the lines of his writings; it's extremely explicit. That's what truly unsettle America's hawks: not the inscrutability, but the clarity of the vision and how effectively he's executing on it. China's Belt and Road Initiative, its technological and scientific advancement, and its growing diplomatic influence in the Global South aren't secret strategies - they're done out in the open and they're working. The real question therefore isn't 'What does Xi want?', it is whether the U.S. can come to terms with it. Can they move beyond their binary 'with us or against us' worldview to engage constructively with a world where different civilizations and systems must find ways to coexist and cooperate, rather than dominate or contain each other.