“Has China defeated our country?” chirped right-wing activist Mike Cernovich when reposting a clip of President Donald Trump speaking to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Friday. The Make America Great Again movement, committed to confronting China, not Russia, was not impressed by the recent summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom it sees as the foreign adversary par excellence. 

Yet beneath the ideological noise surrounding the summit lies a far more consequential geopolitical question: is Washington gradually normalizing China as a co-manager of global order? Strategic communication between the world’s two largest powers is necessary, particularly amid rising tensions over trade, technology, and Taiwan.