Chinese President Xi Jinping will have a lot to smile about when he meets his counterpart Donald Trump in Beijing this week. By any reasonable measure, it's been a good year for China. From the South China Sea to climate change to jockeying over global leadership, the dominoes have fallen in Beijing's favor again and again.
Even the death of a Nobel Peace Prize winning activist while in Chinese police custody -- an event that under normal circumstances would have provoked lasting international condemnation -- failed to tarnish the country's leadership in any tangible way. "China has managed, partly through its own actions and partly through the influence of Trump, to essentially put itself in a position where it has a lot more choices and a lot more opportunities," Professor Rana Mitter, the director of the University China Centre at Oxford University told CNN.
Even the death of a Nobel Peace Prize winning activist while in Chinese police custody -- an event that under normal circumstances would have provoked lasting international condemnation -- failed to tarnish the country's leadership in any tangible way. "China has managed, partly through its own actions and partly through the influence of Trump, to essentially put itself in a position where it has a lot more choices and a lot more opportunities," Professor Rana Mitter, the director of the University China Centre at Oxford University told CNN.
