According to U.S. President Donald Trump, his recent meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping ¡ª the first of his second term ¡ª was ¡°amazing.¡±

Trump may have campaigned on the promise of squeezing America¡¯s biggest geopolitical competitor, but that is not what has happened. Instead, top Chinese academics and retired military leaders whom I spoke to in Beijing this week all agree that Xi¡¯s international strategy has been vindicated and that an increasingly fractured multipolar world is working very much to China¡¯s advantage.

The Chinese view is that we are entering a prolonged phase of counter-globalization. For a country that has relied on export-led growth to lift itself out of poverty, this prospect might seem like a problem. But Chinese leaders are not losing any sleep over it. As they see it, the post-Cold War order sought to create a single global market and promote democracy and human rights through common rules and institutions.