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The scenes unfolding in Beijing were carefully choreographed, yet politics can never be reduced to mere spectacle. When US President Donald Trump traveled to China for his summit meeting with Xi Jinping, Western media, as it often does, fixated on spectacle: lavish banquets, honor guards, theatrical gestures that were designed to flatter the US president. Yet beneath all this ritual lay another reality, harder and more consequential.

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Fall 2025: Issue 43