If you think of the global economy as a giant chess match, China’s Xi Jinping now seems a few moves ahead of US President Joe Biden.
That’s a plausible take on China’s leader hosting French President Emmanuel Macron in Beijing in recent days. Tesla billionaire Elon Musk was in China to double down on the Xi era with plans to build a new plant to produce large-scale batteries in Shanghai – not in Nevada, the site of Tesla’s original “gigafactory.”
On the other side of the chess board, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim made his maiden state visit to China. With US$39 billion of investment commitments, Xi created real doubt about Malaysia’s position that it’s neutral in the mushrooming Cold War between Biden’s Washington and Xi’s Beijing. Advantage Beijing, it seems.