Source: Zero Hedge Tyler Durden

President Xi Jinping’s absence from both the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow and the G20 in Rome has drawn biting criticism from Western leaders and in particular President Joe Biden – who lashed out against Xi in a direct attack Tuesday, calling his refusal to attend “a big mistake”. Biden had told reporters “we showed up” (though the prior day he was caught on video sleeping during opening speeches), while lambasting China and Russia as “They didn’t show up … It is a gigantic issue and they just walked away,” according to the president.

Beijing had quickly responded by highlighting the fact that COP26’s organizers rebuffed China’s request for Xi to have the option of addressing the conference via live telecast. Instead, Xi merely sent a written statement. And China state media has gone further, later in the week mocking Biden as “powerless” while highlighting that Biden had apologized before summit participants for Trump previously pulling out of the Paris Accord.

State-run English language Global Times mockingly called out the “noble” apology as in reality exposing the deep disunity of American politics, leading to a permanent state of gridlock as well as constant flip-flopping on the world stage.

The report said the Chinese public “cannot wait until 2024 when the Republican Party, or even Donald Trump himself, apologizes for Biden’s apology.” 

Global Times included the following commentary focused on the constant “discord” in the US:

Most people believe this was hardly an apology, but a slap in the face of his predecessor, a move to pin all the blame on Trump. This is not about how sorry Biden is. He was making a show and bringing US political infighting to the global arena. 

And then there was this commentary in the publication highlighting a seeming pattern of humiliating Biden apologies to world leaders: 

“Biden’s remarks remind me of the scene when Democratic lawmakers got down on their knees for George Floyd, whose death sparked the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as Biden’s face-to-face apology to France for the US’ ‘clumsy’ Australian submarine deal,” Xu Liang, an associate professor at the School of International Relations of the Beijing International Studies University, told Global Times.

Those cases show that the declining US is trapped in a predicament where the best option is to apologize. If the US still has teeth, it will definitely not become that humble, Xu said. 

Ironically the GT piece to some degree provides confirmation of former president Trump’s own scathing attack on Biden’s appearance in Glasgow. Trump noted that world leaders are “laughing” at Biden, seeing in his weakness and inability to stand up to US rivals. 

“We have never been thought of so poorly as we are right now, including the fact that the leaders of foreign countries, all of whom are at the top of their game, are laughing at Biden as he makes the rounds in Europe. So low and so bad for America. There has never been a time like it,” Trump said in a statement immediately on the heels of Biden’s apology over the Paris agreement.