China officially denied President Trump’s assertion on Wednesday that it wants Joe Biden to defeat him in November. But read between the lines, and a very different picture emerges.

Take what the highly influential editor of China’s state-controlled Global Times newspaper is saying. Hu Xijin is a mouthpiece, adviser, and sounding board for the regime. He’s also a Xi Jinping loyalist who knows when to salute and when to shut up. So when Hu puts his name to an article, he’s speaking personally and politically for Beijing. That makes this Hu quote from Thursday especially interesting.