Biden and Xi talk of a clash of civilisations. But the real shared goal is dominance | Richard McGregor

The US president has challenged the idea that the ‘east is rising, the west declining’. Instead, he insists that America’s day is far from done

Finally, we have arrived, not at a clash of civilisations, but at the clash of civilisations. Or so President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress would have you believe. The US versus China. The west versus the east. Democracy versus autocracy. Biden’s speech last week was rich in laying down markers for Washington in the contest of the century.

“They’re going to write about this point in history,” Biden told a gathering of US television news anchors before his speech, in remarks later released by the White House. “Not about any of us in here, but about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gUli13