With Beijing out of sorts with the US, the UK, Japan, Canada, India, Australia, and other countries too numerous to list, are senior Chinese leaders starting to question a fight on so many fronts?
There are few signs, in public at least, that the leadership is recalibrating, or, to put it more accurately, that Xi Jinping has decided to take any steps back from the ambitious foreign policy goals he has set for his country.
One prominent official spokesman for Beijing on the world stage, Colonel Zhou Bo, writing in the South China Morning Post on July 27, depicted the confrontation with the U.S. as mere "headwinds" to China's "peaceful" development. "The most profound change the world is experiencing is China growing ever stronger," said Zhou, who is an honorary fellow at the People's Liberation Army's Academy of Military Science.
Richard McGregor is a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.
